I went for a run
Usually not one to feel the need to participate in any kind of organised exercise I decided back in January to start running to get myself fit, after all, one needs to be prepared at all times in case called upon to make one’s Formula 1 debut…
One of the first things I did was invest in some decent shoes and gear, shoes in particular making all the difference. Being an information and statistics junkie, I also picked up a Nike+ kit to keep tabs on my running. After using it for a couple of weeks, I found it was also brilliant for staying motivated to try and beat my personal best time and distances whenever possible. At first I found that it wasn’t very accurate though after a couple of different attempts at callibrating it eventually started tracking distances with a fair degree of accuracy.
I’ve included a couple of sample graphs that are provided by the Nike+ service. Top one shows my run log, bottom one showing a recent run that happened to take my total distance covered since January past 125kms.
BMW Sprints at Eastern Creek
Some photos from Round 3 of the 2009 BMW Drivers Club NSW Supersprint at Eastern Creek that took place yesterday. Very impressed with the way these events (and the BMW club) are organised. Yesterday’s round was also a round of the EPCC, so there were a quite few different makes out on the track to keep things interesting.
I had much better luck taking photos than on previous attempts, though still not 100% impressed with the sharpness of my long lens, will definitely like to invest in some better gear (lenses) in the not too distant future. Played around in Aperture much more than I normally would when putting these shots together, amazing how an average shot can be resurrected with a little bit of of a tweak here and there. Hope you like them.
Please drop me an email if you’d like copies of any of these shots.
More photos after the jump:
Audi brings a gun to a knife fight
Perfect, love it.
The Martin Jet Pack. NZ company developing personal jet packs for eventual commercial release. Make sure you watch the demonstration videos.
A weekend in May
Saturday morning walking the neighbourhood with Nellie, autumn leaves, soaking up the warm sunshine and enjoying what has to be the best time of the year in Sydney. Coffee and “tebirkes”, then the return walk home. Afternoon spent with more trips to the hardware store to pickup a new laundry hanger to install in the… er… laundry followed by a big helping of Nellie’s famously incredible spag bol.
Sunday spent doing some much needed decluttering, putting some junk into storage and returning some of our moving boxes. Caught with mum as one does on Mother’s Day and managed to avoid the TV and internet for fear of ruining a late afternoon spent watching qualifying for tonight’s Spanish Grand Prix. Also managed to finally sort out a new camera mount for the MINI a.k.a. a length of aluminium angle with a couple of holes drilled into it, though it is amazing how accurate those holes just have to be to make it work right. Gets installed between the rear seats using the headrest posts to secure it. Can’t wait to try it our next weekend.
MINI AUnited 2009
To celebrate the 50th birthday of the MINI and coinciding with the official MINI United bash on at Silverstone, UK the same weekend, MINI Australia are holding their celebratory bash christened - MINI AUnited - on May 24th in Sydney.
The event starts at Harold Park Paceway in Glebe at 2pm and ends after a screening of “The Italian Job” at the Blacktown drive-in in the evening, with a drive through the City in between. Entry fee is $50 per MINI and for that there seems to be a bunch of goodies thrown into the bargain.
Initial indications seem to point towards a pretty good turn-out, if my MINI mates are anything to go by - should be a hoot.
MagCloud is a new HP offering that allows on-demand, high-quality magazine printing for small publishers. I like this idea a lot and, as much as online, PDF distribution may be the way of the future, there’s nothing quite like the comfort of having a hard-copy magazine at hand.
Bits & Pieces
Picked up the ultimate screwdriver set this weekend, this thing has everything: hex, torx, sockets, a bendy bit, 90° angle, plus the usual slotted/phillips bits - everything! Also picked up a shiny new cordless drill (not pictured). It’s gotta be a good weekend when a visit to Bunnings is on the agenda.
One the the MINI’s new-ish tyres is looking a little secondhand after that run around EC back in March. Those cracks in the tread blocks shouldn’t be there. Might have to get onto rotating this puppy soon before it degrades any more.
Google have started rolling out their new mobile Gmail interface that uses the goodness of HTML5, particularly database storage, to speed things up. My account has yet to be upgraded, can’t wait to give this a spin.
Bathurst 12 Hour
On a whim, I went for an early drive Sunday morning, rising at four and heading out of the city and across the mountains to Bathurst to watch the annual twelve hour race for production cars, aka the Bathurst 12 Hour. Had a brilliant run across the Bells Line of Road though light rain, very thick fog and zero traffic, arriving at the track just after the start.
The race ended up being fairly straight forward, with the gun TMR two car team locking out the top two spots almost all day, the R.Salmon / T.Longhurst / D.White car taking top honours ahead of the sister Evo X of G.Crimp / T.Ricciardello / S.Kostera. There was some concern about the reliability of the newer Evo X compared to the tried and trusted Evo IX models that dominated this race last year and almost every Australian tarmac rally held in the past twelve months, though in the end there was no stopping the factory team from repeating their 2008 one-two victory.
Some other teams running Evo Xs did have a few dramas, notably the Bob Pearson ProDuct car of J.Bargwana / S.Knight / B.Jones which encountered various fuel pickup, electrical gremlins and some brake issues very late in the race, all up requiring an incredible nineteen (19!) pitstops during the race whilst still coming home in a tidy third place. It was a race punctuated by incidents and a series of eleven safety car periods, one where an accident at the top of the mountain blocked the track for quite some time while the debris was cleared away, the field coming to a complete standstill - with many cars switching off their engines - until the track was cleared again for racing.
I spent the last forty-five minutes of the race out the back of the TMR garage watching the team, co-drivers, sponsors and car owners sweating over which car was going to make it onto the top step of the podium. From this vantage it seemed like they decided to run in formation up until the final pitstop, after which it was game on the for lead in the run to the chequered flag. Very exciting to watch the team preparing for those final stops, then agonising as those final minutes ticked over toward the twelve hour mark.
The thing I like most about this kind of production car racing is that even when all the cars were out on the track, you could still tell what kind of car each team was running by the cannibalised road car sitting in or behind their pit garage. Each with various suspension parts and under body trim pieces hanging loose or scavenged to keep their racers on the track.
Took a tonne of photos, easily filling my meagre 6gb supply of CF cards. I really do need to invest in more cards, some decent lenses and a monopod before the next race meeting to make things easier for myself.
- My Flickr photos: Bathurst 12 Hour / 2009
- Full race results on Natsoft
- Race highlights are going to be televised March 14th on Ch7.
‘Hang on a minute, lads - I’ve got a great idea’
The winner of a competition held to determine what Charlie Croker’s ‘great idea’ for saving the gold in the cliffhanger to the original The Italian Job, has been announced.
Dr. Harold Henry and his colleagues had followed their patient for 10 weeks, and knew just what to expect. The woman was carrying seven babies. Multiple ultrasounds confirmed it every time: 7 heads, 7 spines and 28 limbs, all packed into a space typically only several centimeters in diameter.
Only when they were born, eight babies came out. A great tale, the first known birth of live octuplets. Simply amazing.
2008: The Music
Here’s our listening for 2008, as graphed by the excellent LastGraph using data we submitted (scrobbled technically) to Last.fm over the course of the year from iTunes, our AppleTV and my iPhone.
I love how it increases sharply in July/August as I start using my iPhone and how everything dies out in November when we moved, then picks up again sharply as we started getting settled into our new place.
PS: I’ve switched comments back on, plus you can now use your Facebook account to sign in and add comments as well.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
I liked elements of this film, hated others. The storyline of a ‘baby’ born as an old man and growing young with age as those around him age normally is a great tale to tell. Sadly though, the execution had a little too much Hollywood tripe. Worst of all was the whole Hurricane Katrina tie-in, which to me was as gratuitous as it was banal. Could have been taken straight from the script of “Titanic”. Ugh.
Standouts were performances in the film’s many sub-stories - especially Captain Mike and the character of Elizabeth Abbott, the British consul/spy’s wife in Russia, played brilliantly by Tilda Swinton.
My rating: 3/5
My AppleTV doesn't like WPA2
So I scored a 500GB Time Capsule for Christmas to replace the old 802.11b/g Airport Express we’ve been running for the past couple of years. Primary reason for upgrading was to remove the need to have a drive plugged into the MBP to run Time Machine with the added bonus of removing some cable clutter from the desk in the process. The changeover was not without issues, issues which took a fair bit of time & frustration to eventually resolve.
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