Friday 28 October 2011

What's a VAWT?

It's a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. Be prepared to hear more about them in the future.
But first...
Definition of the day, alas not my own:
LYMPH is, apparently, to walk with a lisp. Nice one. It's a joke. Now for the vawt.



Tuesday 25 October 2011

Adelaide: There and Back Again

Yesterday I made the 460km round trip to Adelaide to see an orthopaedic specialist. He looked at the X-ray pix of my knees and was able to confirm that they still had bones inside, or some such knowledge as is taught in medical schools. This was encouraging. I will go back in a few weeks for the mysteriously named MRI investigation. Hmm. That resonates. All this is essential for keeping otherwise out-of-work medicos off the streets.


The drive homeward was slow. A long stretch near Bolivar was blocked where a motorcyclist had been killed... it gave me time to reflect that there are worse worries than a dodgy knee.

Thursday 20 October 2011

A Red Dog Hunter footnote

Enjoyed the SA Film Corporation's watchable Red Dog last night, from the Louis de Bernières story, but was puzzled by a scene which included Bill Hunter, famous Australian actor, in a small role, since my memory (ever fickle) said he'd died a while back and the film is tagged as a 2011 release. Well, it is. And Bill Hunter (1940-2011) died only in May this year, from cancer, in his home state Victoria. A check on Imdb.com (best place! Internet Movie Data Base) offered among other bio facts that the teenaged Mr Hunter was briefly the 100-yards freestyle swimming world record holder. He was an Olympic squad team member. Alas, a teammate beat his record ten minutes later in the next heat. More trivia: on a film shoot Ava Gardner saw Hunter swimming while On The Beach was being made, said: Why don't you try as an extra for this movie? He did, got a job as an extra, which kicked off his interest in film... and voila!
 

Tuesday 18 October 2011

A heartening example: 100 year old completes marathon

Check this for inspiration. 100-year old Sikh gentleman, Fauja Singh, completed this year's Toronto Marathon at a good walking pace (8 hours for the 42 kilometres). Nobody says you have to run all the way. Way to go! This gives me 28 years to give it serious thought for the 2039 event.

Friday 14 October 2011

Where is Abu Dhabi?

Hmm. A contact from last month's editors' conference in Sydney referred a client to me who is from Brisbane but working in Abu Dhabi. The client's academic thesis reached me yesterday after a couple of weeks of preliminaries. I sent back the first chapter, duly edited, and drew attention to a serious matter which only the author can deal  with (as editor I'm not allowed to, under university rules). So what? you may mutter. What's he on about? Well, it means a weekend's hard work for the writer, some thumb-twiddling for me, and it's blooming raining... I can't even go out and cut the grass. Time, therefore, to find out where exactly Abu Dhabi is!
PS Their weekend over there is Friday and Saturday. Now THAT'S interesting. Go Emirates.
PPS I do know where it is really. Do you?
PPPS I wasn't going to cut the grass anyway. Our little secret.

Monday 10 October 2011

Life's a Beach

Nice walk on Sunday arvo on Flaherty's Beach with Bruce and Barbara from Rockhampton, Queensland, and their host Gwen. Well, to be honest, Bruce didn't move far along the sand but instead enjoyed quiet time in the car while we three ambled for an hour stepping over the odd stranded jellyfish. Then tea with Gwen. Bruce produced a Johnny Walker Red Label from the caravan. All caravans should be so equipped. The photo, by Bruce, shows left to right Gwen me and Barb, and the Hardwicke Bay horizon on a slant that day, something to do with tides I expect :)


Thursday 6 October 2011

Singing, Blooming Dutch and Abu Dhabi

Amid the funny weather (spring then back to winter... oh well) we sang the monthly gig yesterday. The group are sad at the passing this week of Andy, a former member from before my time but always spoken of affectionately.

I made a brief visit to the annual Minlaton Agricultural Show and met my friends the Mays as we admired the prizewinning flowers. The Mays ran a plant nursery for many years, which - tenuous connection - was founded as the garden of my present home, before the nursery's move to its current location (now under new owners). I can hardly claim fame from this old connection, since much of my garden always tries hard to return to jungle. The excuse is that this is ecologically sound and praiseworthy.

I went home to an email message in Dutch from a Canadian client. Don't ask - it's complicated. And another from an Australian client resident in Abu Dhabi. I said it was complicated. Happily a mug of hot chocolate meets most of my emotional needs. Is this normal?



 A walk at Port Moorowie is my back-up system for the hot chocolate therapy. Breakers on the horizon , upper right, show the location of the imaginatively named Flat Reef.

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Breakthrough in internet technology

Definitely a breakthrough :) Some of today fell into a black hole of disconnection from my Internet Service Provider. I think, How dare they? But "they" reckoned without my splendid skill, after several hours during which time I was reduced to attending practice with our singing group, in remembering to push home my modem connection properly. It had worked loose. I knew that.

Monday 3 October 2011

Trading Places

Nope. Not a movie title. By the way, a nope is a small bird... amazing what you learn on TV quizzes. Anyway, I should have said Trading Tables. That was my weekend. On Saturday I manned a trading table at the Town Hall of a town which shall be nameless, selling books and CDs, interesting but draughty and underlit. Then yesterday which was Sunday I went along as a member of the public to the much better event in a neighbouring town. This was bright and cheerful with plenty of the necessary trading tables but also stage entertainment and the fabled Devonshire Teas served through a kitchen hatch guaranteed to bang heads of the unwary. Yes, DESPITE the latter trap, this was the more user-friendly event. How is it so?

Today is a public holiday, Labour Day of the traditional October Long Weekend in this part of the world. I ought to stay away from the computer: already I have had messages involving me doing something resembling work... from Canada, the Emirates, and even from Melbourne which we in South Australia know as Another Country.

Congratulations should go to Geelong for victory over Collingwood in the Grand Final of the nation's Australian Rules Football competition. I do not follow this sport, thus excluding myself from any conversation in any bar in Australia. However, I am sad that England knocked out Scotland in a narrow win to progress in the Rugby World Cup.