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This is so very true


Thanks to XKCD
http://xkcd.com/627/

False Start 2 - The Saga Continues

You might remember my post about a rain interrupted V8 Race Experience back in May. Those readers with an eagle eye and excellent memory would have realised that I had rebooked for the 8th July (yesterday). Last week when I looked at the forecast, it was fine for the whole of this week. Great! Until yesterday... Rain... Again! It had been raining on and off throughout the morning. I called weather hotline in the afternoon before I left, they said that although there had been rain, it had stopped, the track had dried and they were running the cars. Sweet!

So I took off to Eastern Creek, but the weather didn't look promising. It was dark and cold. As I got closer to the track, the sky got darker, and the rain started to fall. I got to the track and went into the V8 Race reception area, and they had stopped the cars and were waiting for the rain to cease.

I waited for a little while, but eventually, one of the guys that runs the V8 Race told all those who were waiting that there was little point in waiting around longer, because even though it wasn't raining at that stage, the track was taking a while to dry out, and there was still a bunch of people who were waiting for a drive and there wouldn't be enough time to get us into a car before the daylight runs out. So I now need to rebook again. The next lot of dates at Eastern Creek is the last week in September. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Rebooked again for Wednesday 30th September... keep that in mind all you eagle eyes readers who are playing along at home...

The first weekend in July 09

Over the weekend I got a couple of opportunities to use my new camera. Thankfully the weather was fine and sunny for both days. On Saturday I went to Cumberland State Forest and has a wander through one of the walks and the nursery that is in the forest. In the nursery there were a few black boy trees that had just been watered. It was late in the afternoon and there was little light. Here is one the the photos:


Then on Sunday, I went to the lake in Norwest Business Park. It is a nice place there, and with the sun out, it made for a lovely afternoon. There was a guy who builds remote control power boats and he was running them around on the lake. They were rather noisy, but they were very fast and handled like they were on rails, turning sharply. I had a chat to the guy after he has crashed one of the boats into the wall on the edge of the lake (fortunately no major damage was done), and he was saying that the plain white boat was capable of speeds upto 80km/h. Here are a couple of photos I took:



Click here for a photo album from the weekend.

The Eagle has landed

My new toy has come in, and I now have it in my hot little hands, after waiting a bit over 2 weeks.




What is in the bag?




Yep, that's right, a Canon 500D Premium kit, with the 18-200mm lens.





And here it is, unboxed :-)





As I go taking photos, I will post some of the good ones up here.

Waiting for my new toy

I ordered a new toy, not last weekend but the weekend before, and I'm still waiting for it to arrive. More details when it finally gets here.

*C'mon, hurry up!!*

It's not soccer mate.... it's Football

Last night (Wednesday), I went to the Football (or soccer) at ANZ Stadium, Homebush, to see the Socceroo's play Bahrain in a World Cup qualifier match. The Aussie's had already qualified, but it was still great to go and see them play. I don't really follow the soccer... oops, Football, but I have enjoyed going to see the Socceroo's play a couple of times. I went with my girlfriend and some of her friends from work. We had good seats, in row 13, so fairly close to the action, and down beside the goal. Fortunately, the end of the field we were sitting at, was the end that the Aussie's were attacking in the 2nd half, which is also when they scored both their goals.

The first half was ended scoreless. The Socceroo's had more possession and a number of shots at goal, but hadn't been able to score. In the second half, they seemed to play a lot better and scored 2 unanswered goals to bring the final score in at 2-0. It was great to witness the win and it was a good game, but it was a damn cold night! It was freezing there.

Below is a picture that I took during the game. It is not very good quality, it was taken on my Nokia 6300.

Great Success

I went to a mates place last night to watch the State of Origin. Each year when I go there, I barrack for the team that I have picked in our work Footy Tipping competition, and follow the score closely (because we also pick the margin). Anyway, I picked QLD to win by 12 points (or so I thought), so I was disappointed when they won by only 10. When I got to work this morning though, I checked the results of the tipping, and I had actually picked QLD to win by ten! YAY!. Final score was 28-18.

New T-shirt

I found the following t-shirt on a website called Final Gear. They are my source of news for all things Top Gear and Fifth Gear. Recently they ran a competition to design a t-shirt, and below is one of the designs that was successful. I decided to get this t-shirt to go with my I AM THE STIG t-shirt. Can anyone translate the Morse code? -Don't worry, I already know what it says ;-)

Victory Boy

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had been in Katoomba at KYCK. This years theme was Victory Now, Victory Later, so they they brought in Victory Boy. This is his intro video. Very cool!

New

I walked into Woolies today and found these Orange flavoured M&M's in the chocolate aisle. So I bought a packet. Never seen them before, so it will be interesting to see what they taste like



EDIT: Sorry about the crap quality photo... it is from my Nokia 6300.

UPDATE: They taste like orange... A bit like Jaffa's actually.

False Start

For Christmas last year, my wonderful girlfriend gave me a V8 Race Experience. This is conducted on the short track at Eastern Creek Raceway (for Sydney-siders, and at various other tracks around the country). The short track at Eastern Creek is basically the "Flip Flop" which joins Turn 4 to Turn 9 and cuts out the section of track that runs around "Corporate Hill". They give you the option of driving a Ford or a Holden. The cars start as standard Falcons and Commodores, but they get a roll cage, racing seats and harnesses, modified exhaust (and don't they sound awesome!!), slick tyres, a locked diff (I think) and a body kit that makes them look like a V8 Supercar.

This morning I wake up and it is raining. That's not a good start, because they don't run the drive days in wet conditions. The cars run on slick tyres, ie. no groves to disperse water on the track, hence the not running in the rain rule (click here to see what can happen in the wet on slicks). There is a number to call that gives a recorded message with info about the weather and track conditions. During the day the weather cleared up and the sun was shining. A couple of calls to the weather hotline and the it appears that the weather is clear and the track is dry and the cars are running, albeit they are somewhat delayed due to the morning rain. That's OK, I was booked in at 3pm, she'll be right.

So, I head out to the track. You have to be there 15mins early to register and sign on etc. At this point you can also take the option of purchasing a DVD of footage from your drive for $49. I take this option. They give you a blank DVD in a case that you give to your driving instructor and he pops it into a DVD recorder in the car and you get a recording from a couple of cameras in the car that point at your face while driving and out the front of the car at the track.

Next is the drivers briefing. The guy runs through some racing techniques and safety type stuff. This lasts about 30mins. After this they send you to the pits to get into a race suit and helmut. At this point during our day, some guy in a car on the track has run off the circuit and hit the wall. The cars that are currently on the circuit are stopped and the onsite paramedics are dispatched. All is fine there are no serious injuries to either the driver or the instructor, however the session has been delayed to make sure that everything is OK. Safety is paramount for these guys.

So here we all are. About 25 guys (and 1 girl) were all suited up waiting in line to drive either a Ford or a Holden (I was in the Ford queue, because Fords are better). Just as we are thinking that we are about to get a drive, the black clouds roll in and the rain tumbles down. Oh, this isn't good. It's 4pm. The cars have to be finished on the track by 5pm. The track has to be dry before the cars to go out. And it is raining. That is not a good equation. When it was still raining at 4:30 there was no chance we would be going out on the track. I now need to re-book for another time. The next block of dates are in July, so I'll call them in the morning and re-book.

John Bowe was there too, today. V8 Race offer a John Bowe Experience where you get some flying laps with John.

I was really looking forward to getting out and driving a V8 Race car. Oh well. I hope it isn't raining next time.

UPDATE: Re-booked for Wednesday 8th July. :-)

Sunshine Coast

Last week I was on holidays :-) I spend the week from the 9th May - 16th May on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It was a very enjoyable and relaxing time, and was good to be away from work for a while.

I was staying at The Point, Coolum Beach. Coolum Beach is a fairly small suburb on the Sunshine Coast about 25km south of Noosa. Here is the view from the balcony of the villa I was staying in:


This was stitched together from a number of photos taken from the balcony.... it hasn't been edited or even cropped (lazy me!) and was stitched using AutoStitch.

While there, I did some of the touristy things. I had a car, so I could take myself to wherever I wanted. Some of the highlights were going to Tin Can Bay one morning to see and feed the dolphins, and taking a drive through the Sunshine Coast hinterland to Mapleton, Montville and Maleny areas.

Tin Can Bay is further north than the Sunshine Coast. It is about 1.5 hours drive. There is a pod of dolphins that come into the bay and you can feed them fish. There are a group of volunteers that oversee the Dolphin Centre and the feedings but they come in at about 8am each morning to feed. Unfortunately I arrived a little late, about 8:30 and they had already been fed. However, that morning a couple of dolphins came back to the feeding place, so I was able to see some wild dolphins up close and get some photos. I have some photos below. You may be able to see the scratch marks all over the dolphin in the photos. According to the lady at the dolphin centre this is normal for wild dolphins. We are used to seeing dolphins up close in captivity (like at Sea World) that are clean. However, dolphins in the wild have to make out their teritory, and quite often get into fights with other dolphins and fish, so end up rather battle scarred. Note the chunks out of the dolphins fin too.




The Sunshine Coast hinterland is a very beautiful place. There is a mountain range, The Blackall Range, that has a few small country towns along the top. These are places like Mapleton, Montville and Maleny. Montville is a nice little town that is famous for it's shops. Now, I'm not overly keen on shopping, but I did enjoy Monville. There is a lolly shop and plenty of other small shops some of which were worth a look.

Here is the view from a lookout near Mapleton. Again it has been stitched with AutoStitch.


The drive out to the Blackall Range area is quite nice too. Starting from Nambour, you make your way up the mountain to Mapleton, and then follow the road along the top of the ridge, making for some great views out both sides of the road. Through Flaxton and Montville and then Maleny is at the other end of the road. Then you make your way back down the mountain into Landsborough.

I also visited the Eumundi Markets at Eumundi. Eumundi is a small town, and on non market days, there probably isn't much happening. However, when the markets are on, hundreds and probably thousands of people flock to the place and it is packed with people. The markets are on Wednesdays and Saturdays. As I said about Montville, I'm not overly keen on shopping, but there were a number of places there that I found to keep my interest for a while.

I had a great time on the Sunshine Coast. The only problem with holidays is coming back to work and wading though the billions of emails that come in while your gone.

Gospel Graffiti

I have been spending weekends in Katoomba for a while now, the last 3 being the KYCK convention run by Katoomba Christian Convention (KCC). This is a Christian youth convention where youth groups from all over the place come for a weekend of Bible teaching and much fun. This video was played on Saturday night. I think it is a great video.

Cattai Ridge and Pitt Town Roads

As I said in my post about the Wisemans Run with the club, I took a nice drive back from the Riverside Oaks Golf club after lunch.

Here are the directions:

1. Come out of the Golf Club, turn right onto O'Briens Rd
2. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd
3. Turn left onto Halcrows Rd
4. Turn right (fairly sharp turn) onto Cattai Ridge Rd
5. Turn left onto Boundary Rd
6. Turn Left onto Pitt Town Rd
7. Turn Right onto Kenthurst Rd

Here is the map



On a similar note, if I want a fairly short, quick drive, there is a variation on the above, to turn it into more of a loop starting from Dural McDonalds and ending at Kenthurst.

1. From the Macca/KFC carpark, head out to Old Northern Rd
2. Turn left onto Old Northern Rd, heading north
3. Turn right onto Cattai Ridge Rd
4. Turn left onto Boundary Rd
5. Turn Left onto Pitt Town Rd
6. Turn Right onto Kenthurst Rd

Here is the map

HAPPY DRIVING!! :-)

One hundred thousand

My car ticked over 100,000 kms this afternoon. I was able to snap a picture using my camera phone. Time for the BIG service.

Another Wisemans Run

Wow! It's been ages since I last posted! Anyway, I have been on another Wisemans Ferry run. This time it was the monthly run with the MX5 Club of NSW. It has been a while since I have been on a run with the club, so it was good to go and catch up with a few people I haven't seen for a while.

The run this time was in the reverse direction to the Wisemans run we did at the end of last year with the MX5 forum, and there were a few differences in the route.

The route this time was as follows:

1. Start at Rofe Park in Hornsby Heights
2. Turn left out of the car park onto Galston Rd and head toward Hornsby
3. Turn left onto the Pacific Hwy, heading North
4. Follow the Pacific Hwy through Asquith, Mt Colah, Mt Kuringai and Berowra
5. Follow the road onto the Freeway (not the Old Pacific Hwy) headed for Newcastle
6. Take the Calga Interchange exit onto Peats Ridge Rd (Exit for Peats Ridge and Mangrove Mountain - this is just before the Mooney Mooney Bridge)
7. Follow Peats Ridge Rd for a while
8. Turn left onto George Downes Dr headed for Mangrove Mountain
9. Turn left onto Wisemans Ferry Rd at Central Mangrove
10. Follow Wisemans Ferry Rd through to the ferry. You can stop and Spencer for a bite to eat if so desired (this was our morning tea stop, there are toilets there if needed)
11. Cross the ferry into Wisemans Ferry. Once you are off the ferry, this is Old Northern Rd
12. Turn right onto River Rd (before heading up the hill out of the town, also near the Police station)
13. Follow River Rd for a while passing through Leets Vale
14. Turn Sharp left at Cliftonville Rd and follow to the end
15. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd (different to the previous Wisemans Ferry Rd)
16. Turn right onto O'Briens Rd headed toward the Riverside Oaks Golf Course
17. Turn left into the Riverside Oaks. This is the lunch stop and the end of the run.

Here is a map of the route, for those who are more visual people.

It was a beautiful day. Great weather and lots of cars (about 30). Lunch at the Riverside Oaks was rather nice too. Our convoy of 30 odd cars was stopped at Berowra just before joining the freeway for random breath testing (before 10am). Obviously they couldn't test us all in the limited space they had set aside, so most got waved through and waited down the road for the others to be breath tested. Just a small disruption to the mornings drive.

Spencer, which is the "Hub of the Universe" according to the signs that are there (see link to wikipedia :-P ), is a nice place to stop. It is right on the river. There is not much there, only a general store and some toilets.

As I said in my last post about the Wisemans run, Wisemans Ferry Rd between Mangrove Mountain and Wisemans Ferry is quite rough and bumpy, and there is a section where part of the road is closed for work and there are traffic lights to allow cars to pass.

River Rd is a lovely drive although it is a very narrow and twisty road with many narrow, blind corners. This can prove to be a bit dangerous at times with oncoming traffic. Thankfully each of the times I have driven the road, it has been fairly quiet, and I've only ever seen just a few cars.... until Sunday that is.... there were heaps of cars on Sunday. There must have been another club driving that road on the same day. We came across many old American cars coming in the opposite direction.

The run ended at the Riverside Oaks Golf Course for lunch. We went into the bistro for our meal, which was pre-ordered at the start of the run to allow the bristro to be prepared for an onslaught of people coming in for lunch. I had the beer battered fish and chips. It was rather nice, but similar to all the other places around that do beer battered fish and chips. Other options included hamburgers, chicken burgers and steak sandwiches, which all looked nice when they came out.

On leaving the golf club, I took a few nice back roads on the way back home. I'll post these in a separate post soon.

It was a great day of driving. Great roads, great scenery, and great people. It was good to finally get on another club run, I will have to make sure I go to more in the future.

More Wisemans

Went on a club run on Sunday. Had a great time, no major incidents, but tune in later to find out why the NSW Highway Patrol stopped 30 odd MX5s in convoy. Details will follow.

Wisemans Ferry Run

I've been want to write about this for a while now, but haven't had the time to sit down and get it done. Just before Christmas, the guys from mx5cartalk.com organised to do a drive through Wisemans Ferry. It was on the weekend before Christmas, and we had about 15 cars show up (including a Nissan Skyline).

The route was as follows:

1. Start at Rofe Park in Hornsby Heights
2. Turn right out of the Rofe Park car park onto Galston Rd and head towards Galston Gorge
3. Proceed through the Gorge, veer left at the top as you come out of the Gorge
4. Drive through Galston, past the shops
5. Turn right at the roundabout after the shops on to Mid-Dural Rd and follow to the end
6. Turn right onto Old Northern Road and head north towards Wisemans Ferry
7. Drive right to the end of Old Northern Rd going past the shops and pub in Wisemans
8. Cross the car ferry at the end of Old Northern Rd
9. Turn right onto Wisemans Ferry Rd as you drive of the ferry
10. Follow Wisemans Ferry Rd all the way to Central Mangrove (it is a fair distance)
11. At Central Mangrove (the next big crossroads after the ferry) turn right onto George Downes Drive
12. Turn right onto Peats Ridge Rd
13. Follow this under the F3 Freeway and turn right onto the Pacific Hwy, then turn left onto the Pacific Hwy (otherwise you end up on the freeway)
14. Follow this until you reach Pie in the Sky at Cowan (at the top of the hill after you come up from Brooklyn)

Click here for the map of this route on Google Maps.

The drive is a good one. It isn't too long, only a couple of hundred kms round trip, and it only takes about 3 hours to complete. There are good winding, twisting driving roads and some nice scenery. The most picturesque part of the drive is along Wisemans Ferry Rd, from Wisemans through Spencer and up towards Mangrove Mountain. The road here runs alongside the Hawkesbury River for a while and makes its way through some small country towns. The problem here is that the road in this stretch (Wisemans - Central Mangrove) is not all that great. The surface is bumpy, uneven and has many small potholes that upset the car. The road is also very narrow in some sections, but there are very few cars that use it most of the time.... until you run 15 odd MX5's along there :-P

Of course, there is the run along the Old Pac to finish up the run. Ahhhh.... the Old Pac is a great piece of road. Lots of twists and turns and undulating ups and downs. It is a nice drive, but with a speed limit of 60km/h for the vast majority of the way, it is a little slow. You can always stop for a pie at Pie in the Sky too :-)

I have done this run on a number of occasions in both the MX5 and my previous car in both directions. It is always a nice drive and usually free from traffic for the most part.

HDR Photography

The other week a friend and I went out to take a few photos and create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. My friend is a photographer with W&B Automotive Photography. This outing was inspired by this thread over at mx5cartalk.com that was talking about HDR photography.

So Andrew and I headed out on a Wednesday night a couple of weeks ago and found an empty car park where we could take some photos. Basically the idea with shooting for a HDR photo is to take a photo at the correct exposure and then bracket that with a couple of photos that are over exposed and a couple that are under exposed, generally changing the exposure by 1 stop at a time.

Once you have your photos with multiple different exposures, you can then use software to blend the photos and create the final product. A common piece of software used for HDR is Photomatix. Below is the final result. Thanks Andrew!

Windows 7

Recently Microsoft released the Beta version of Windows 7, the next Windows operating system. I got my hands on a copy of said operating system and last night installed it on one of my machines. The PC in question is one that I have recently built up to use for "playing" and studying for Microsoft certifications. It has 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 and GeForce 9500GT. I plan to run up numerous virtual machines on this PC as I study for the above mentions Microsoft certifications.

So, I installed Windows 7. The install was very smooth, there were no problems at all. It looks pretty much the same as the install process for Windows Vista. Afterwards, I was left with some unknown devices, but I was able to quickly and easily install the drivers for these devices from the disk that came with my motherboard. Boot time is very quick.... a lot quicker that Vista on the same PC.

I have only used it briefly as yet, but I must say that it ran flawlessly (this may have to do with the amount of RAM and the speed of my CPU). I had a bit of a look around and the interface and all the settings are very similar to what was in Windows Vista. The taskbar is different and there are icons for Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Media Player that are like the "Quick Launch" toolbar in previous versions of Windows. However, when you open one of these programs, the icon also doubles as the taskbar button for that application, so when you click on it again you get your already opened window. Other applications that are opened get similar looking icons in the taskbar, which then makes it look like there are more icons in your quick launch. If you have an application open, the icon in the taskbar gets a box outlines around it that seems to indicate that the program is running, and when you hover the mouse over the icon, a preview window pops up with an image of what is in the application currently. It is a bit hard to explain, but I will post up some screen shots for those who are interested sometime in the next week when I get more time to explore.

Another thing I have noticed is the absence of the Windows Sidebar that was introduced in Vista. Instead, you can still have your "gadgets", like the clock, CPU meter, Slide show etc, straight on the desktop, and not in the Sidebar.

Internet Explorer 8 is also included in Windows 7. I used it a bit last night and it has some new "interesting" features that I have yet to completely use and understand. Being a Firefox user, I'm sure that it will take a lot of convincing for me to go back to using IE. Also included is Media Player 12. This look rather different, and I don't really like the new look/design of it, so I hope it is a work in progress that will be changed shortly.

Now I know that this is beta software, and there is likely to be bit and pieces that don't function or are missing all together, but still I'm impressed with what I see. I will continue to use Windows 7 and see what I think as I get used to it more. So far I'm liking what I see. I just hope that Microsoft don't screw it up between now and the release to market which is supposedly sometime next year.

Stolen number plates??

I was in Wentworthville (Western Sydney, NSW) this evening when I saw a police car drive past in the opposite direction. I didn't think anything of it until I pulled into a shopping centre car park, put the roof up, and got out of the car to head into the centre. As I was walking away from the car, the same police car stopped behind my car. The officer behind the wheel of the car pointed to me as if to say "Don't go anywhere". I was thinking "Oh crap, what is going on here?!?!"

The police officers got out of the car and started asking questions about me and my car like, "Is this your car?", "Where do you live?", "How long have you had the car?", "Where did you buy it from?" and so on. They said that my rego had come up as being stolen! I'm thinking, I know it is my car, because I bought it about 3 years ago.

Anyway, after about 10 minutes of chatting to them while they checked stuff on the computer in the police car and talked on the radio they told me that my number plates (or at least my rego number) had been on a Toyota in 1990 that had been stolen, and that when the recovery was done on the car, something was missed that meant that my number plates were still marked as stolen. I got the number plates not long after I bought my first car in June 2000.... so it has only taken them 8.5 years to catch up with me!

The officers told me that they would try to fix up the problem on the system for me, but also advised that I should call the RTA to sort it all out. They said that the plates had been re-issued because they had been missing for so long and that my car and rego are all OK, so I have nothing to worry about. Obviously, because I haven't been pulled over for anything apart from the odd random breath test, the Police have never had reason to look up my plates. These guys just drove past me and ran a check on my rego, because they said that they do that randomly, and it has come up on the system as stolen, so they chased me down.

Weird ehh??

Welcome to 2009

Hi all,

I'm still here. It has been a while since my last post, but don't worry, I have some more stuff that I will blog about, all in good time :-)