Anthony's Blog

This year we hosted Christmas lunch... for 18 people.

The link above is to the Christmas video. Click on the image above to see a 2.5 minute video of the lunch. (The video hasn't got any particular plot, it's just a collection of scenes from the day to give a feeling for what it was like.)

And for the full gallery of Christmas photos, click here:

Christmas Gallery

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes January 4th, 2010 09:54:12 PM

I'll post separately about New Year's Eve 2009/10. But for the record, here's a description of Oscar's exciting New Year's Eve.

Because of the rain on New Year's Eve, I took photos of the fireworks from our upper balcony. After they finished, I went downstairs and had some champagne with Dennis and watched the Graham Norton New Year's Eve show (rewinding it to get the bits I missed whist the fireworks had been happening).

After a while, Dennis's mother Monika and her partner Len arrived home from their New Year's Eve cruise on the Yarra/Docklands. We chatted for a while, and then Len went upstairs to get ready to go to bed. Shortly after, he came downstairs to say that he could see Oscar looking in through his bedroom window. (A bedroom window that is seven storeys high.)

This was Oscar's adventure: When I finished photographing the fireworks, I must have failed to shut the balcony door properly. (Guilt, guilt.) So Oscar, who loves the allure of the forbidden balconies, went out. So far, no danger. Then he saw a pot plant sitting on a trolley: with grass in it (a bit like the photo above, but out on a balcony). So he must have jumped up to have a nibble. He likes chewing on grass. And then he must have looked back towards the building and seen Len through the window of the room next door. Being the friendly cat that he is, he stepped off the pot plant and onto the edge of the railing so that he could see Len better.

Fortunately, with a little gentle coaxing from the balcony door, he decided to jump back down to the safety of the balcony and - a little more reluctantly - to come inside again.

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes January 3rd, 2010 05:49:19 PM

I get the Guardian Weekly delivered. Over a cup of coffee today I read a sentence that I initially skipped past quickly. Then I went back and looked at it more closely. Eventually I pulled out a piece of paper to decode what it was saying. Six different countries are mentioned in the sentence. It's not a list of countries: every country is playing a different role in the story.

The sentence seemed complicated. It's certainly a very carefully thought out way of communicating a dense amount of information. My initial instinct is that a sub editor should have simplified it. There's an argument that if I needed to get a piece of paper out to understand it completely, then it lacks clarity. But on further contemplation, maybe it does its job well. The sentence was giving background information about a previous event. It appeared in the sixth paragraph of the article.

It was written by Simon Tisdall.

The sentence reads like this. (I include a lead in sentence to give it context):

The Bangkok arms seizure followed several recent incidents. In July, the French-owned, Bahamian-flagged ANL Australia bound for Iran was intercepted in the UAE after a US tip-off.

The full article is here.

Within the sentence we get the following information about six different countries:

The ship's owner	France
The ship's country of registration	Bahamas
Name of the ship	ANL Australia
Final destination	Iran
Place where ship was intercepted	UAE
The country that gave the tip-off	USA

Had Simon Tisdall wanted to squeeze a seventh country into this sentence, the option was open to him. The sentence doesn't mention the country at the heart of the article, North Korea.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes January 1st, 2010 05:19:58 PM

So, newspapers are suffering a crisis in their business model.

It's not so much that people are no longer buying papers. (Sales have dropped a bit, but if that were the only problem, they'd survive.) The major problem is that their advertising revenue streams have dropped: general advertising, and more critically, classified advertising is evaporating.

I value (a good proportion) of the articles produced by Fairfax's publications, most specifically The Age. And therefore I understand how hard they need to work to generate new revenue streams. Accordingly, when I read The Age on the web, I'll tolerate the pages being crammed with display ads.

But I cannot, cannot, WILL NOT tolerate ads that start playing videos with SOUND when I open an article. And it's very specifically the audio that upsets me. (Although video that covers the article would also be a problem.)

Last night I was watching John Adams (on my Mac with its TV tuner). We reached the point where the Continental Conference started reading the Declaration of Independence. Dramatically they read the words "And we hold these truths to be self evident", which turned out to be the moment that the page I had clicked to on The Age started playing a ad's christmas carol and video.

It's hard to imagine the moment being more effectively spoiled.

The Age had received many page hits from me that evening, as I had browsed articles whilst watching TV. They got zero hits after that.

I believe that these video/audio ads are only supposed to come up occasionally, but I find them coming up repeatedly. By which I mean many times each day.

I'm making a list of advertisers that I will loathe, despise and not patronise. It seems heartless, but for the time being that's going to include the Salvos.


And since it happened again yet again tonight, I'm going to have to completely zero my page hit count. There are many convoluted ways to do this, but this will be the simplest way...

http://www.theage.com.au/text/

I'm giving Fairfax some feedback through their feedback link. I don't expect them to write back and tell me that they are dropping the audio/video ads simply because they happen to upset me. But it is true: Fairfax and their advertisers are driving me away from The Age's site. With luck they will learn, and this nonsense will stop. But I'm not holding my breath.

One final note for Fairfax:

If you're frustrated that I'm using your "Text" pages, don't think that abolishing them would force me back to your ads (video/audio/graphical). That's missing the point. There are a dozen other ways I could achieve the same result. Advertising isn't my problem. You need to get eliminate the compulsory and intrusive audio/video from your normal pages. They're just rude and counter-productive. Educate your advertisers that they're not worth it.

Comments (3)
Anthony Holmes December 14th, 2009 08:06:35 PM

The ABC's Hungry Beast had some shots of the Melbourne CBD taken from a helicopter last night.

And here, thanks to the magic of screenshot technology, is a shot of the city block we live in, with our apartment circled:

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes December 3rd, 2009 01:00:13 PM

I was sitting at my Mac today, reading (work) emails, when suddenly Kablooiii !!, my Mac rebooted.

I sat there feeling stunned and surprised: on rare occasions a program will crash, but a complete Mac crash is virtually unheard of. Maybe it overheated?

But no, flashing clocks revealed a power outage this morning: one that lasted about a second.

And the Age confirms it:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/falling-tree-branch-cuts-power-to-13000-in-city-20091203-k79j.html

As is typically the case: it seems as though the power companies try really hard to avoid outages in the CBD. Presumably they don't like the idea of thousands of people being caught up inside lifts and riots in the streets. So whilst the outage went for half an hour in some places, it was only a second or so here.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes December 3rd, 2009 12:16:40 PM

At the risk of turning this into a blog about lightning, here's a second posting on the topic. This time I've got it in motion: six whole seconds of it! (Well, I didn't want to bore you, so I kept it short.)

Yesterday afternoon (Thursday 26th November 2009) it suddenly got dark as clouds arrived. I had a look at the Met's radar, and saw a narrow intense band of rain coming across. On an impulse I guessed there might be a thunderstorm on the way... which is exactly what happened. See the news report of its impact here. I pulled out my camera and put it into movie mode.  

Click on the first image below to see the movie. I've slowed it down to 1/8th of its original speed so that you can see the forks of lightning. It's interesting to see how they build up, fade, reappear in a slightly different configuration, fade again, then reappear with a slightly more ghostly edging.



And in case your internet connection doesn't let you watch videos, here's a still frame:

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes November 27th, 2009 10:03:07 PM

Last night I commented to some friends that when we had moved into our apartment back in 2001 there had been a series of spectacular thunderstorms, but that lately the quality had dropped off. However tonight, to make a liar of me, we had a display of lightning as good as any that we've seen.



The images in my prior postings generally didn't have a bigger version behind them. I've finally decided to ensure there's a larger picture behind most the images I post in this blog from now on.


Clicking on the images takes you to my SmugMug gallery and lets you see the pictures automatically sized to suit your screen resolution. (Probably the best option.)
    -or-
Clicking on the .jpg links below downloads each image in their highest resolution. (Normally this is the second best option, but the .jpg links below would work if SmugMug wasn't working for any reason.)

Comments (2)
Anthony Holmes November 1st, 2009 12:14:53 AM

Some of you may know that I collect Street Directories. I find it interesting to look at how different map makers have represented cities as they have changed over time.

I used to compare Gregory's street directories with my preferred map maker: Melway. I'd smugly notice places where Gregory's hadn't done as good a job as the Melway. But it took a close eye to pick up problems.

By comparison, Google Maps provides a horrible slap dash map.

Have a look at this:


View Larger Map

This is a tiny bit of map. It has the following faults:

1. The former Batman Avenue tram would get stuck in sand as it tried to make its way up to St Kilda Road through Birrarung Marr - instead of following its proper route for the last decade where it travels across the Exhibition Street bridge to Flinders Street. Google Maps' Melbourne train and tram routes seem to be at least 15 years old.

2. The Embank Arcade looping near Elizabeth and Collins Streets hasn't existed for a very long time. It had closed before Google Maps was created.

3. Quick Quiz: Look at Google Maps and tell me which are laneways and which are arcades: Manchester Lane, Flinders Way, Centre Place, Lingham Lane? You can't tell. Street width is entirely unreliable for telling you what you are looking at.

4. Flinders Walk reaches out onto the Yarra. Special.

6. If you ware walking around Melbourne, you might like to cross the Yarra on a pedestrian bridge. Hmm. There isn't one. At least there isn't for Google Maps. Both the pedestrian bridge (the one with the arch) and the Sandridge Bridge are missing. (At some magnifications, Sandridge Bridge is marked with its name and a black square, but nothing that shows you can walk across it.) This is not a case of Google Maps simply (and consistently) leaving out footbridges: Three other footbridges across the Yarra appear elsewhere.)

7. Walking through the Flinders Station underpass from Elizabeth Street is a major way to get to Southbank. But if you follow Google maps, you'll have to go the long way around.

8. Feel like a drink at Melbourne's famous Young and Jackson Hotel? Follow Google and you'll find yourself trying to order your beer from the Macdonalds a couple of doors down. The placing of businesses is chaotic. Zoom in a bit more and a whole range of businesses are wrong. Some you can forgive, such as placing Lindt Chocolate near Elizabeth St/Flinders Lane (instead of Collins Street), because it's in a large property title. But the Punt Hill Apartments have crossed Flinders Lane. Journal Cafe has swapped buildings. Tiffany & Co. have moved from Collins Street into the Centreplace Acade. Wax Records appear in Degraves Street (in the section of the street helpfully misnamed as the Campbell Arcade).

9. Given its width, I could only presume that Google Maps thinks you can drive down Block Place between Collins Street and Little Collins Streets (this part of the map is off the top edge of my window). But there isn't even an arcade for the entrance just to the west of the Block Arcade next to Collins Street, let alone a street.

10. Maybe it's a bit picky of me, but why is it that at this resolution we get Lingham Lane named on the map, but the much bigger and more important Degraves Street isn't? Degraves Street (and Rothsay Lane, just to the west of Lingham Lane) only get names when you are zoomed right in to the highest magnification, but Lingham is blessed with a name when you zoom out. Random.


Google have a big job: Their aim is to cover the world. For that I thank them. It was the only feasible way to get a map of the part of rural Italy that we visited a few years ago. But, if they're going to be ambitious, I think they need to do better than to make ten mistakes in an area of a couple of city blocks. Google gets its data for this location from MapData Sciences Pty Ltd. Either MapDataSciences Pty Ltd need to pick up their game, or Google need to licence content from a better supplier. And the best in the game for this country is Ausway. (Suppliers of GPS devices should do the same. I've seen some pretty dodgy GPS maps.)

Note: The Google Map may change over time, so here's an image of what it looked like on 26th October 2009.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes October 26th, 2009 12:24:59 PM

We're back from Wilsons Prom: safely.. there was no need to set off emergency beacons, no disasters worse than the need to apply a bandaid or two to prevent blisters.

The wonders of modern technology (a GPS receiver and Google Earth) allow me to produce maps showing where we walked. See the map below. The numbers next to the days indicate when we walked: 1 = first day, 2 = second day, etc..

We ended up doing mostly doing northern walks on odd days and southern walks on even days.

The Lighthouse walk was a big effort (11.5 hours return - including taking plenty of time for photos - but on a day that had only 11 hours and 56 minutes of daylight). Good planning meant it wasn't as strenuous as some of the killer hikes that I was sent on at school, or some of the stretches on a Cradle Mountain walk (where I had a much heavier pack). I'm now keen to do some other long walks. Dennis tends to think that booking accommodation at the Lighthouse would be a better plan: and I guess that's true because it would allow South Point and Waterloo Bay to be visited: one on the way in, and the other on the way out. Roaring Meg was a special surprise. From its name and position I had imagined it to be rather windswept and 'beachlike'. Instead it was a very lush and secluded space: heavily regrown since a 2005 bushfire went through that part of the park.

Interestingly, some of the best photos of our time at the Prom came with one of the most 'local' walks: to Little Oberon Bay (with a loop to take Tidal River photos on the way back).
 

Comments (2)
Anthony Holmes September 26th, 2009 09:36:58 PM

Whilst I was down the Prom (and could only browse the internet on my Blackberry), I started composing an entry (this entry) headed "Wombats"... but I couldn't edit it or upload any pictures. (Hence my comment below, because I could comment on my empty posting.)

Anyway: What I had intended to say was that within a few minutes of starting our first walk at Wilsons Prom (after driving down from Melbourne and unpacking the car), we saw our first wombat. This was just across the Tidal River footbridge.


A few minutes later later Dennis saw another wombat in the bushes, but I missed that one.

First day: 1-2 wombats

Day two: 2 wallabies on the Sealers Cove track.

Day three: 6 wallabies on the Lighthouse track and two falcons. (And lots of frogs.)

Day four: A rosella that sat on the seats inside our cabin for a while and looked like it wanted to move in with us. Six wallabies in and around the walk to Millers Landing. One wombat seen on the road back to Tidal River.

Day five: A skink on the walk to Little Oberon Bay. A kookaburra. Several butcher birds that tried to remove photographic equipment from my pack when I had left it alone on the beach for a few minutes. And a second wombat, very close to our cabin:


And on the final day, a couple of emus up on the main road, near the turnoff to Cotters Lake. On every day there were also many birds that I haven't specifically mentioned.

Comments (2)
Anthony Holmes September 15th, 2009 08:05:22 PM

Tomorrow we head off for a week at Wilsons Promontory.

In our new 'walking' mood, I've got hopes of doing some significant walks. However: we don't have a (portable) tent, so any walk will need to be a day return trip.

In theory it's possible to walk to the Lighthouse and back in a single day: but it's a significant trip. We'll see whether we manage it. I hope so, but no promises.

Our preparation for this trip has, however, been influenced by the Tim Holding effect. Despite the fact that I don't really think I could seriously lose my way in the Prom (since I'll be walking with navigation aids - a topographical map, GPS, National Park signs, the sun)... and although there is substantial mobile phone coverage... the recurring message when Tim Holding got lost on Mount Feathertop was "if only he had an EPIRB" to signal for help. And getting lost isn't the only risk: one could fall down and injure oneself in a spot without mobile coverage. So I went off in search of an emergency locator beacon. And I can understand  why people don't pick them up more often. There might be more than one store in the CBD that stocks them: but they certainly aren't sitting out on display in camping stores. I could only find one store in the CBD that had them easily visible: Bogon Equipment had one Kannad Personal Locator Beacon and one Spot meter (which uses a different satellite system, and requires a yearly subscription in return for a lower up front cost). The woman who served me had never sold one before.  I bought their Kannad XS3-GPS. So if anybody feels like getting santimonious about people who go out hiking without them: these devices are still 'cutting edge' and certainly not seen as mainstream items by hikers. (But I'm guessing that in 12-18 months time they will be.)

Here's a photo from the last time I was at Wilsons Prom. Taken on Kodachrome slide film. In 1990.  (!!! !! Yes, it has been waaay too long since I've visited the Prom.)

Comments (4)
Anthony Holmes September 14th, 2009 10:58:24 PM

Whilst I love my digital SLRs, one thing I miss from the days of film is having a pocketable camera that I can just carry around with me for opportunistic snaps.

Until recently there have only been a limited number of small digital cameras that meet my quality requirements: possibly a Canon G11, provided I only use low ISO settings (like 400 or less). More recently, the Olympus Pen E-P1 appeals to my heart, and I suspect the similar - slightly less stylish, but slightly better performing - Panasonic Lumix GF1 might be the compact(ish) camera that I buy one day. But for the time being I don't have money to buy those cameras.

So today I pulled out my old film Ricoh GR1s camera. I then went out to buy a roll of film. That's where I got a bit of a shock. The couple of camera stores that I walked in had virtually no film available: maybe 20 rolls per store in total, or less. Heck: in the past I have gone on holidays stocking more film than these major city camera store retailers currently have on display.

When Kodak announced they were discontinuing Kodachrome, that was sad but understandable: since the 1960s/1970s, it has been a very small part of the total film market: maybe less than 1%. I figured that it would still be relatively easy to buy (and process) colour print film for a long time to come.

One day, getting colour film processed will require you to send it to the last lab in the world (situated in Hungary or Kansas, or somewhere like that)... but I expected that it would still be possible to buy film at a retail store for another 5-10 years. Based on what I saw today, I'm not sure whether it will be possible to walk down Elizabeth Street Melbourne and buy film from a store in 2014. It's likely to be mail order only by then. I'm guessing there will still be one or two people processing film in Melbourne in 2014. By 2019 I'm guessing you'll have to post the film off to somewhere remote for processing.

An interesting aspect of the remaining stock is that instead of consolidating down to a single type of film (say, Kodak 400 Max), the last rolls of film are clearly being aimed at people who are experimenting: there was traditional silver black and white and chromogenic black and white, and (E-6) slide film available. That was encouraging.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes September 7th, 2009 08:21:34 PM

On the weekend I purchased an Epson Perfection V700 Photo Scanner to further my Great Photo Scanning Project.

The scanner I've been using up until now (a Nikon Super Coolscan 2000) cannot scan medium or large format negatives.... but the Epson can. The Nikon Coolscan also has trouble scanning Kodachrome slides. (They flare badly in the areas of high contrast that seem to appear in most of my slides.) In theory the Epson isn't as good as the Nikon, but it's probably good enough to scan snapshot quality medium format negatives. The Kodachromes (being very high quality film to start with, but also a smaller film size) really need the best possible resolution to capture their quality... but in practice the Epson might give a better scan. Time (and testing) will tell. I've started a Wiki to cover my experience with the Epson here. My notes on using the Nikon are here. (And there are also links to both on the left hand side of this blog.)

The photograph above, by the way, is a rather stylish photograph of Dennis's Opa (Grandfather) outside Luna Park in Melbourne. Taken as a 6x6 photograph on 120/220 film in the early 1960s (1966 at the latest).

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes August 31st, 2009 10:07:14 PM

It's likely that I've spent more money in the local Coles Express supermarket (Elizabeth Street) than I have spent anywhere or on anything in the world (except for apartments).

So it's annoying that their obsession with reducing their range of items seems to so distinctly target the range of things that I like. If I like it, it gets dropped from the range. They started reducing their stock 18 months ago... and I suspect they started in our store, because they were reducing our range long before they announced it. Here's one description of what they are doing.

Over the last 18 months they've dropped my favourite chocolate, my favourite coffee, my favourite yoghurt, my favourite lasagna, my favourite soft drink, my favourite sweets, my favourite washing powder, my favourite dishwashing powder, my favourite sponge, my favourite shaving cream, and some of our cats' favourite cat food.


And that's only the items I can distinctly remember.


Last week we happened upon two items from the supermarket that we really liked: a type of sausage and some dry roasted almonds. We joked that, because we liked them, the two products were sure to be dropped from the Coles range.

It was a joke, right?!

Wrong.... today I visited the supermarket, and neither product was available. OK: the sausages I can understand, stocks will vary. But the dry roasted almonds were COLES brand dry roasted almonds. But no, apparently it's too difficult to stock two types of almond, so they dropped the nice type.

In the article linked above, the group CEO Ian Mcleod said "Early results are encouraging… it shows just how over-ranged we are in certain segments". And "He says the company was conducting a trial to ensure "we don't make national mistakes" that could trigger a mass defection by shoppers to rival stores."

Here's a message, Mr Mcleod:  I still buy milk, and a few items like bread from your store. But the significant majority of our grocery shopping in your store has dwindled and gone to your competitors.

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes August 20th, 2009 03:34:16 PM

I had been arguing that Dennis's preference for running around the Tan in the early evening of Saturday and Sunday sometimes made it feel like the day was 'on hold' until after the Tan run had been done. And then there was no day left. So today, as an experiment, we ran the Tan early (ummm..., actually we had to wait for a rain storm to pass, so we couldn't start until about 2pm).

After that we set off on our bikes to ride the Capital City bike trail. It's a circle of 32.33km (according to my new bike computer).

Dennis pointed out that, with a run and a cycle, we'd covered  roughly two thirds of a triathlon: which is a very scary thought.

The increased intensity of exercise has intruded upon my ability to take photos: when we went on walks I would take my camera, but it's not practical whilst running. So I insisted that I take my camera on today's ride. I didn't take many pictures, but at one stage there was this tree that was still wet from the rain, and nicely illuminated by the sun which was getting low in the west.





Larger versions of these photos can be found in my Smugmug gallery, here and here.

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes August 16th, 2009 10:30:49 PM

On Monday night I picked up my bike after a service.

On Friday night I picked up Dennis's bike after it had been serviced: and a large range of accessories (lights, pumps, racks) added.

On Friday evening we fiddled around for a while installing the bits that I hadn't asked the bike store to install (like the lights and the lock). And we had dinner. And then we started wondering when we could go out and try our newly serviced bikes. At which point the weekend was looking awfully full, with:

• The presumption that we'd have our usual brunch at Lorca on Saturday,
• And then Dennis needed to buy some new clothes and get a hair cut,
• Followed by a need to run around the Tan,
• Before we were going off to a fortieth birthday party.
• And on Sunday, Dennis's mother and her partner were coming around in the morning,
• In anticipation of us all going to the matinee performance of Wicked (the second last performance) (to celebrate Dennis's mother's birthday),
• Followed by a need to do our second weekend run around the Tan

As a result, on an impulse, we just headed out, into the night, to try our bikes out on Friday night: from 8:00pm onwards. We were just going to cycle on the banks of the Yarra as far as the Swan Street Bridge. Dennis hadn't cycled for more than a decade, and it was dark so we weren't really going to cycle much. But once we got started, it was hard to stop. Before we knew where we were, we had reached MacRobertson's Bridge. (Before we got into the hang of exercising, a walk to MacRob Bridge almost killed us with exhaustion.) We did this not heeding the risks: a dark bike path, bikes that might unexpectedly break on their first outings after a service, the risk of being impaled by the Deadly Burnley Cormorant (DBC) with its beak of death (BoD), etcetera. By the time we had looped back to Southbank, the ride still didn't seem long enough, so we weaved our way past the pedestrians and buskers near the Casino, crossed over to Docklands, visited the dormant not so great Observation Wheel of Melbourne ("Operations Temporarily Suspended"), and then looped back home via the Latrobe Street Bridge and Elizabeth Street. It was fun.

On Sunday we saw Wicked the second time. The first time had Rob Guest as the Wizard. This time we had Bert Newton. I had feared that Bert Newton would be too much Bert Newton and not enough The Wizard (because his own personality is so well known to Melburnians). But I'll give him credit: he was a very good (evil) Wizard.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes August 9th, 2009 09:55:07 PM

I read a study recently outlining the benefits of tight glucose control as a way of reducing the risk of complications from diabetes after an especially long period: 30 years.

Although there are some frustrating limits on the way that data was collected (due to limitations on what has been measured), the rough conclusion was that tight blood glucose control substantially reduces the risk of retinopathy (an eye problem), nephropathy (kidney failure) and cardiovascular disease for people who have had diabetes over the long term. Some of the horror statistics that used to be bandied around (say "diabetics have a 50% chance of dying within 10 years") are simply no longer true for a well controlled group of people with Type One diabetes.

I've now had diabetes for 33 years, so it's a relevant kind of finding.

But: the point I want to make here is that this data has been collected from 1,441 people who joined a study called the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial between 1983 and 1989.

Insulin first became available to treat diabetes in 1921. By the 1940s it was clear that people with diabetes developed complications. When I got diabetes in 1976, it was assumed that good control reduced the risk of complications: but there wasn't much in the way of large scale studies to prove this.

The 1,441 people in who agreed to join the DCCT were the first large group to be studied over time. By 1993 when the results of the study were published, it was clear that tight control made a big difference.

Since then, an overwhelming majority of those people (currently a surprisingly high 1,297 of them) are still involved in a follow up study called EDIC. They are continuing to be measured and examined to this day.

It would, of course, have been nice if a study of this size could have been started (say) back in the 1950s. The DCCT/EDIC people have had diabetes for 2-12 years less than me. What's important is that the medical profession is continuing to reach valuable conclusions based by the overwhelmingly large number of participants who are continuing to make themselves available for study. And they'll forever be the only large group who started being studied as far back as 1983.

And for that, I thank them.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes August 5th, 2009 11:52:15 PM

Quite some time ago, a bracket fell off my bike seat, which made it effectively unrideable.

It fell onto a large expanse of gravel and frustratingly I couldn't find the missing part.

I put the bike away. A lot of time passed. (The gravel expanse was on Batman's Hill a place that is now filled with a lot of construction equipment... across the railway lines from the site of the new Age Building, which hadn't then started construction.) To be honest, I suspect that it has been at least five years since my bike broke: and potentially any number of years up to eight years. (Yikes!).

Today I wheeled it to Cecil Walker and asked them to fix the seat and give it a general service. I dropped it off well after 11am and it was ready before 5pm, which was an impressive turnaround.

After I picked it up I went for a bit of a ride. And gosh, it was fun.

(I cycled down to South Melbourne to attend a focus group discussion on green topics. There was no connection between attending the focus group and riding the bike, except when Cecil Walker surprised me by telling me it would be ready on the same day it was the only way I was going to both pick up the bike and be sure I could manage to get to the 6pm meeting on time. If it weren't for the meeting my first ride probably would have been a more cautious affair.)


I should have gotten it fixed years ago.

Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes August 3rd, 2009 11:27:22 PM

A few weeks ago I posted about how we had started running around the Tan. I've now got a few stats as to how long it takes us:

Each Saturday we are running a little faster than the previous Saturday. Each Sunday we run fractionally slower than the day before: presumably Saturday hurts us a little.

However, based on five weeks of running, I can now make a confident prediction. Based upon our current rate of improvement, we'll be running around the Tan in zero seconds by about 28th January 2010.  Woo Hoo!


Dennis has found a site that records how long people take to run around the Tan here. It looks like a zero second circuit isn't possible. It's kind of reassuring that the fittest people can only do it at double our speed.  I doubt that I'll ever be able to do it in 12 minutes 20 seconds (the fastest time recorded in their 2009 records). But at least that makes my 24 minutes look 'slow, but not pathetic'.

The complicating factor here is that the Go the Tan people run clockwise, whereas we run anti-clockwise (because Dennis thinks that long slow uphills with a sharp downhill on Anderson Street is a more honest direction to run).

Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes July 27th, 2009 09:26:07 PM