jason

2009 Perth Sun Fair

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:50:00 GMT

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

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

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

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:34:00 GMT

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

Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:30:00 GMT

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

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:35:00 GMT

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!

Downloads Broken in Firefox

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:30:00 GMT

For a while Firefox downloads had been broken for me. The download dialog was always empty and most things I tried to save didn't end up saved, although some did - weird! It didn't appear to be due to any plugins and a bit of googling suggested something may be screwed up with my profile. However I didn't want to delete my profile.

Some more googling and I came up with Ubuntu bug #29102. Unfortunately it's a bit vague but one of the suggestions to delete the download.rdf file in your profile (leaving everything else as-is) worked for me. Yay!

For reference, this is Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) and Firefox 2.0.0.8, although this has been going on for a bit so at least one prior revision of Firefox and maybe more.

PAWS website re-launched

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:55:00 GMT

We re-launched the PAWS website last week. Even though PAWS has been around for quite a few years the website has been sorely lacking.

PAWS is a Perth based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to People and Animal welfare and supporting the vegetarian and vegan community. They have a resource center in Northbridge where you can learn more about what really happens to animals in our society as well as a cruelty free store with vegan food and other items are available. They've just launched their catering service for events too - so last week saw them at the Pride Festival serving up awesome vegan meals which turned out to be very popular.

For those new to a vegetarian or vegan diet, or just curious, the website will be home to a growing set of restaurant reviews, recipes, and links to other like resources. To be announced soon will be a weekly PAWS meal night open to anyone to come along and eat by donation.

Of course the website runs on a Linux host and built on top of my Perl web framework. I just need some more time or help to convert some of their Internet cafe terminals to Linux too . Let me know if you're close to Northbridge and want to help out!

Greenhouse Gases - What Can I Do?

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 09:30:00 GMT

When it comes to global scale problems you can often feel alienated - what can I do as an individual? Despite the Australian Government being extremely slow to move on this issue I'm happy to say that as an individual you can do a lot. In fact you can probably reduce your own greenhouse gas emissions by 50% fairly easily from today.

The single most effective thing you can do is significantly reduce animal based food, especially meat. Changing to a vegetarian or vegan diet is even better. Why - it's an energy cycle thing and growing animals is a very energy intensive (and water intensive) exercise. The UN reports that rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars. Plenty more on this issue - just search.
Next is signing up for 100% green power. You don't have to wait, sign up now or switch to a provider that supports the National GreenPower Accreditation Program. Yes, it'll cost marginally more but can be offset with some smart electricity use reduction such as CFL lights, turning things off, solar hot water systems, etc...
Drive less. This one will save money too. Walk to the local shops and even the major supermarkets may be within a 20min walk. You'll be surprised to find walking there and back (plus shopping) will be a similar round trip time over driving cause you don't have to worry about parking and traffic. Commute to work or school by bus, train, or bicycle.

It's great to see Russell Coker on Planet Linux Australia researching on the environment and sharing his findings with the wider community. At least I find them very interesting.

There was a great 6 episode series called the Carbon Cops on ABC a short while ago. I think it's finished now but visit their website for some good information and tips on reducing your greenhouse gas footprint.