Cats and Dogs

A quiz: what's this man doing?



I'll give you a clue.



Give up yet? Here's the answer.



I'm not really the biggest fan of team sports --- I barely know the difference between a cricket post and a a rugby bat, but on Friday I went along to the Australian Rules Football game between the Gellong Cats



and the Western Bulldogs.



I should have done some reading on Wikipedia first because after watching the first quarter of the game things made as much sense as Farnarkling.

Even when you don't know what's going on, the game is fun to watch; which, I guess, is why over 46,000 people turned up to see a game between two teams, neither of whom will probably reach the final, in a sport that is played in half of Australia and nowhere else in the world.



The game moves very quickly, almost like basketball or netball, without all the business of men rolling around in the mud holding each other that seems to be the main feature of rugby.



The referees also help with the watch-ability of the game when they do things like this:









Even without a pie,



I enjoyed the game much more than I expected and can happily say that it's the most entertaining of the many versions of grown men chasing an inflated pigs bladder.



Go Cats!

09-08 Cats and Dogs

Artistic cycling

I came across this video on the excellent bikesnobnyc blog. It's too impressive not to share.

'Roo photos

I mentioned in my previous post that there are kangaroos on campus, here at La Trobe. Afterwards, a cry went up (three exclamation marks in one line of text counts as a cry by my standards) for some photos of them. So, Sunday morning, I took my life, and my camera into my own hands, ignoring newspaper reports of viscous kangaroo attacks, and went for a walk in the wildlife reserve that forms part of university.



These two were enjoying their breakfast, not far from the entrance to the park.



They didn't seem too aggressive, but then again, they could have just been waiting for me to get closer before they pounced.



One of the groups was clearly trying to trap me by using a cute younger kangaroo in the bushes, to lure me closer so that they could get behind me and block my escape.



They needed to use the youngest possible kangaroo, since adult kangaroos are quite ugly looking.





Though they are fun to watch when they move.



I was surprised to find that kangaroos are not originally Australian. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they originated in France. I have two pieces of evidence towards this claim, though both are based on a particular well known frenchman.

Firstly, and this isn't unique to frenchmen, I know, kangaroos are fundamentally lazy.



The second piece of evidence, however, is far more conclusive, as Bethany will attest.



More kangaroo photos from the morning on my Picasa page:

09-08 Kangaroos

Kangaroos!

First day of work today, at my new job in a new city and new country. There is a wildlife reserve attached to the campus here. I went for a walk after lunch and saw kangaroos. It adds some novelty to any job when you can do that!

The bike ride between work and C & N's place, where I'm staying or the moment, isn't too bad. I haven't measured how long it is yet; or timed how long it takes me. It's probably not the most direct route between there and the campus but is keeps me off main roads (3+3 lanes of traffic at 80km/hr) as much as possible. There's no real change in altitude between the start and finish but the road is undulating for most of the way going up and down enough to make me realise how unfit I've become in the last month or two. I don't know if there are any hills about where I can do some stair sprints but I need to start doing some sort of exercise. I'm planning to try a find a place to live closer to town --- about 13km from campus. At least cycling that every day should give me some exercise.

Oh, and Australian drivers seem nuts. Why are they all in such a hurry?

Australian Animals, Bottled Beer, Captivating Containers

Seeing as, at the end of the week, I'm off to the land of kangaroos and creatures that hop (skip, jump), I thought a novel New Zealand beer might be in order. And what beer could better punctuate the end of my time studying in NZ than the Amrageddon India Pale Ale from Epic breweries with a massive 42 hops per bottle. 42 hops! That's more bounce than the combined population of wallabies who wander my future place of work.



Modestly calling itself "the answer to everything" Epic Armageddon is not as bitter as I expected having already tried the Epic Mayhem and Epic Pale Ale which both have (nominally) fewer hops per bottle. The Mayhem in particular had significant resiny bitterness which made it a beer which it is inadvisable to rush. The Armageddon, however, is much more citrusy and fruity (though not in a Belgian Lambic style) with some delicate floral flavours mixed in. In short; is delicious an worth every cent of the ten-odd dollars is costs for a 500ml bottle (I got mine at Moore Wilson's but Wellington Regional Wines and Spirits may have it available for ordering online.)

Still on the topic of beer, I bottled ours on Sunday. The specific gravity was still over 1.01 but the signs of fermentation which were previously present seemed to have vanished.



Hopefully the reading was overestimating on account of all the sediment (there was a layer of about 9l of gunk in the 20l of beer) and I haven't bottled too early and made bottle bombs. Anyway, now I think some labels are in order. One challenge is that I bottled it in re-used Grolsch bottles which have a pattern stamped onto them making it hard to apply a sticker smoothly. There are a few dozen bottles and I was thinking that if someone with a background in graphic design, or something, (Travis?) came up with a label then a few bottles might head their way in exchange.
Just sayin...

Bikes and guns: two things to worry about.

This from an article in the independent about a lack of supply of bikes in the UK.

Although the UK bike industry is a rare manufacturing success story, outperforming every other sector of the UK economy over the past five years except weapons production, we produces barely 5 per cent of the one million machines that Raleigh, our best-known bicycle maker, was producing in the 1950s.

It seems that a government scheme to promote cycling has been more successful than cycle manufactures had planned on. And since most bikes are produced in factories in south-east Asia, there is a long lead-in time before more can be produced.

Meanwhile, the number of cyclist fatalities in 2008 for the UK was the second lowest number ever recorded, the same year that the number of kms cycled in the UK reached its highest level in 17 years. This would seem to be perfect evidence of safety in numbers --- the more people cycle, the safer it becomes for cyclists since motorists learn to share the road (and presumably cycle friendly roads, etc, develop). This is counter the the current views of some Wellington city councilors who have stated that they think people should be discouraged from cycling since it is unsafe --- people can be encouraged to cycle after the the council have figured out how to make cycling safe and how to fund whatever plan they come up with.

Academic Success

...and there I was thinking I'd done well to submit my thesis. Turns out T-rex has something to say about that.

Beer Bottles

It's almost time to bottle the beer that Erich and I brewed a week and a bit ago, so I've been getting the bottles ready.





The beer itself is busy fermenting away. The specific gravity has dropped to about 1.014, though I'm not sure how accurate this number really is since the huge (huge, huge, huge) amounts of sediment in the fermenter --- on account of poor filtering of the wort and the large amounts of hops we used --- seems like it might make the specific gravity higher than it would be if the density depended only on the amount of sugar remaining in the solution. Still, I'll wait a little longer since there are still more bubbles being produced so the yeast must be doing something.

Brooklyn War Memorial

Now that I've finished my thesis I see the world with different eyes. For example, I was sitting in the car park behind a doctor's practice in Brooklyn, (I was waiting for someone who was inside alright!), and I looked up and saw a statue standing above the trees on Brooklyn hill.





It was the Brooklyn War Memorial.



To get to it, follow the signs for the wind turbine from Brooklyn village, about half way up the hill the signs for the war memorial start.

From the statue there's a great view of the Wellington and the harbour.





And of my apartment building.

09-07 Brooklyn War Memorial

Deliveries: of thesis and families

Finally, on Thursday, (and just within the four year deadline), my thesis was done.



Which is to say, four copies have been printed, bound and delivered to the Graduate Research School.



Three copies will be sent to my examiners, (the fourth copy will be used for magical rites, or left sitting about in a dark room for no particular purpose, or something), and in a few month's time I should have my exam. And then, all going well, I'll be done.

In addition to my submission, there was an additional reason to celebrate on Thursday night: Karin and David are parents (as of Bastille day). That's two more than the necessary number of reasons for going to the Celtic.







And Travis and Graham are back from climbing French Direct on Alpamayo --- one of the nicest looking mountains there is. No doubt, Travis will soon have some photos of the trip on his swanky re-jigged site.

Since Marco asked for it, a PDF copy of my thesis can be downloaded here.

09-07 Thesis Submission