@PeteH There are a few shops round here that are just repairs and limited sales. Locally cheekytransport.com.au and glowwormbicycles.com.au seem to do ok mostly fixing bikes, and selling odd-ball stuff. Commuter/touring bikes, electric bikes rather than "whatever Giant spit out this year".

humanpowered.com.au in Melbourne started out as a bike fix co-op and became a bike shop.

@Mσᶎ It is a difficult one and would require hard work to make it a success. I think for me personally I would be better off getting back into IT. I have been out of it for 18 months now so there would be a bit of work to do. Also it would pay a lot more. An awful lot more.

The trick will be finding something I actually want to do. I used to do a lot of work with banks in London, I'm not sure I want to get back into that.

@PeteH oh yeah, I assumed you were past that and into the "peaceful ramping down" part of your career where you want to do something you enjoy and ideally make enough money to live on. I'm used to people who go over, work for a bank in the UK or consluting company in the US then come back after 10 years, buy a nice house and start a bike shop or import surf boards or something.

that kinda is where I'm at. The "pro" is the something I can do for the rest of my life and generate a sufficient income, but the "con" is setting up the business, and also self-doubt I suppose (how good a mechanic am I?)

It is difficult - I have 25 years investment in IT so have some decvent skills there. But I'm not sure I "want" to do that.

Also, I'm not sure I want to work full time again. IT roles tend to be full time.

I promised myself I'd start thinking about all this at the end of the summer...it's coming up to the end of the summer!

while I remember: the "that's just behaviour change" comment was the girly saying "we've done that before, we know we can do it nagain, bring it on", rather than whining that it's hard. Hey, I started eating (bought) meat again after more than 25 years only eating things I'd killed myself and road kill (ie, not much meat at all)

@PeteH NOW! Think NOW!

Don't make me come over there and explain things to you.

@Mσᶎ NOW???? Can't I wait until tomorrow?

;)

You've had tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Now!

lol

I dunno, I've had extended breaks before (I even spent a year as a bike mechanic) and really enjoyed them, but then I lost a lot of money so now I have to work in IT again. It doesn't thrill me.

I remember at one stage a few years ago thinking "I have to stop doing full time activism and start looking for IT work while I still have vaguely current experience".

Did it used to? I was very enthusiastic early on...

Oh yeah, when I was the disruptive change it was exciting as anything. For at least 10 years it was new exciting things to do.

up to about age 30. But a lot of things happened at that time. Bought house, got married, had child.

Work became "for money" after that. But it could also have been shitty clients

We're buying right now. Or not. Went out today saying "no more than 900k"... place went for $1.16M. We were not even in the game.

My sister and her wife bought a place in nthe UK for under 300k pounds, which is like $500k... and their wages are relatively higher. It's not funny.

It has to be where you're looking then. Will you compromise on location?

I keep looking around IT and trying to work out what does excite me. Not sure what would. Current project is all mine so it's a crazy mix of C++, PHP, MySQL, JaveScript and I added Python the other day. I fail to see how Python is dramatically better than PHP.

@PeteH we are in the process of doing exactly that.

Yeah, I concluded a while back that most of the work I was doing was just shifting data from one place to another.

Another couple of stops out the train line, in the "terrifying muslim" zone (I kid you not, don't even look at Australian media on muslims right now). Prices are much more reasonable, and I'm just not finding muslims as scary as advertised.

My cousin married a muslim guy earlier this year. You could not meet a more welcoming, hospitable bunch of people

I mean, yes, there are scary muslims. But the dude they arrested the other day who's been in jail for firebombing, and had 50kg of high-grade explosives... he scares me. White dude, anglo-christian. Scary as fuck.

I think we're on the same sheet there

We've had muslim neighbours, I bike past the big mosque in Auburn every day. Except evenings during ramadan... I walk, because there's people everywhere :)

Rarely have I seen someone so happy to be given two young (live) roosters in a sack as our muslim neighbours :)

The thing that scares me most is where people say "I want to live this way, I want you to live this way, or I want you not to exist"

Oh boy. That, pretty much.

Our press is telling us that this is what IS are saying right now.

But thyey probably think that is what Obama is saying.

I mean, I don't want to live next to a mosque, that whole 5am call to prayer thing is not me. But by the same token, if someone near me loses their nice Christian church bells, look in the body cavities of whoever was ringing them.

The ubiquitous McDonalds

The whole "sign away your soveriegnty, we will help write your laws" bizzo bothers me more than even the idiot boy here wanting to chop someone's head off to make a point. And I live in a country which quite probably had its govt changed by the US. And I come from one where bthe last terrorist attack was committed by... France.

I think it is significant that a lot of Americans see 9/11 as unprovoked. Mujslims will tell you it was in response to Clinton's foreign policy

American exceptionalism makes me quite grumpy. I think that came up here the other day, and the merkins were visibly unhappy.

With Americans there are some staggering stastistics, for example how many of them actually have passports. But we'd be making a mistake if we lumped them all together as one.

True. But every single one that I've talked to claims their country is democratic, and they do without exception vote for war criminals to run their country. I think the best they've managed in a presidential election was like 1% for an anti-war candidate.

Which does kinda mean that you can safely say that every merkin supports war crimes. You can also raise eyebrows by reciting facts like "the population or america is nearly a billion".

In Aus, isn't there a law that says voting is compulsory?

@PeteH yep. Rigorously enforced... if you enrol, and don't bother to respond with a weak excuse if they send a "why u no vote?" card.

Turnout is higher than most places (excluding Scotland :)

NZ just had a very sad election, the "winning" party got only microscopically more votes than "enrolled but did not vote".

So do you get lots of spoilt ballot papers? That's what I would do (assuming I didn't agree with any of the candidates)

I've scruted, and it's about 5% invalid+donkey (number the boxes 1..N down the page)

(which is the norm in the UK)

Unfortunately the donkey votes count. And we get a lot of ... people who don't read carefully. So the "Liberal Democratic Party" got an extra 5% or so of the vote because they drew #1 on the ballot and apparently a scary proportion of Liberal voters are not very engaged.

We have parties offering lifts to people etc. to counter voter apathy

But not where I live - we are very safe Conservative. There is no point in me voting.

I suspect the Aus Electoral Commission will be changing their rules on party names. What I want is a switch to randomly ordered ballot papers. That would negate the donkey vote, and make counting only slightly harder. But since we count in each booth that's mu7ch less of an issue than it would be in the UK.

@PeteH near-universal suffrage and proportional representation is the minimum standard for democracy IMO. The first-past-the-post gerrymander is just nonsense.

in reality, our parties are sufficiently similar that it makes little difference.

The NZ referendum (actually two referendums, one to pick the favourite alternate, then a run-off to see if we should switch to that) was brilliant. And similar to the Scots experience, there was a lot of money and important people whinging about how change is bad. NZ rose up as one and gave them the finger.

I look at the US and see that also, but I note that Americans see big differences between D/R

That's where NZ is interesting - Labour is currently being eaten by The Greens because they're "like National, but not quite as nasty" and people are going "meh" and not voting, or voting for someone else.

I like referendums. But I can see why politicians don't

Admittedly I'm a democracy extremist, I think the grounds for demancipation should be criminal insanity and incompetence, narrowly defined. The US hobby of stripping the vote from people convicted of being poor or black is egregious, but I don't think disqualifying people for being under age is reasonable when we don't do the same to mentally deficient old people.

Oh, and that's from the NZ perspective, where anyone legally resident gets to vote, not just citizens. Which is another egregious omission.

I think the criterion for voting should simply be "paying tax".

Until the Scottish referendum, there was always an anomaly here where 16-18yo would pay tax (if working) but could not vote

@PeteH I find that amusing, except that Kerry Packer (a rich Australian) was famous for declaring a taxable income of $1 every year. And it would be another way to strip the poor of votes, unless it also counted sales tax and was not "net tax". Both of which I think would be unlikely.

I don't think any country exempts young people from paying tax. I'd love to be proved wrong.

AFAIK, every time a two year old buys something, they pay tax. So yeah, by that criteria, let them vote.

I favour the semi-eugenic criteria of "must pass a competence test, specifically, they must correctly fill out a ballot paper".

Vaguely remember Kerry Packer for cricket! We have such people here, but there will always be people who can beat the system

With provision for differently abled people to receive appropriate papers or assistance.

Incidentally do you remember the UK Expenses Scandal a few years back? I saw a story the other day that MP's expenses last year topped the amount that caused all the furore last time

But no big story this time

@PeteH I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

I mean, isn't democracy all about getting people involved with their government? Shouldn't we be trying to get people to vote, not trying to stop them? I realise that for the people in power right now preserving that power is important, but I also thought one reason to have a bloody queen was so that she can stamp her foot and say "all you commoners shgould be voting. Stop making excuses or I shall call for my executioner".

Unfortunately I am irrelevant.....except in my own little world

Insofar as I accept the validity of "watery tarts throwing swords at people", the benefit is that we have someone above the populist fray to help correct deficiencies in the system as they become apparent. As that nice Mr Godel pointed out, deficiencies are inevitable and later scientists have confirmed that human rule systems are best viewed as a set of moving goalposts.

My master beeps, bingles and bongs. It is time to turn off the computer and retire to my bed.

Have fun, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

later @Mσᶎ

Well today was the day....Mrs went on a "how to keep chickens" course and is even more enthusiastic than ever. We have a week's holiday in October and I'd guess that shortly after that we'll have some of our own.

Me? All I've done so far is go out for a 40km ride. Dunno why, but bonked shortly before home.. Out of practise, methinks

Heading out for a 30 km ride myself in a bit!

take care!

One of the chickens kept by the woman who gave the course was apparently called Nando. To anyone British, this should cause an instant chuckle. To anyone else....nandos.co.uk

lol

Good morning by the way!

actually that link looks a bit crap. Suffice to say it's pretty much the equivalent of calling it Colonel Sanders or something

Good morning @Rilakkuma, did you sleep ok in the end?

not so well, not sure why

but I went for a ride today

rode some 30 kilos around Tokyo - it is not too hot anymore and smells after gingko biloba trees.

Very good ride. And found out something's wrong with the derailleur

probably just needs readjusting but the problem is it rarely stays well in its place as set up.

Also that is another good way to try and reset your body rhythm - to tire yourself during the day to be able to sleeo at night

yes, this is what i thought

great minds...

:))

I felt as though I was drained on today's ride. Partly I think because I went for a ride yesterday evening and still felt a bit stiff, partly because we are on a health kick at the moment and do not have sugary stuff in the house.

It was one of those rides where, when I got home, it was temoting to go to the shop and buy chocolate!

sometimes it is good to drain yourself out :)

My daughter is just getting into the shower for her "morning" wash....it is 5pm!!!

O to be a teenager again!

lol

Not only that, she also knows everything! Amazing!

I have suggested going out for some food in 15 minutes.....Mrs PeteH needs to get back because she is watching an auction on eBay. Consequences of the digital age.....

remembering myself coming 4AM home and responding "not your business" to father's comments.

not nice at all!

Bon appetit then!

yes, me too unfortunately. I don't think we ever really appreciate what our parents go through until we ourselves become parents

Although I left home at 18, so by far the majority of my drunken nights were away from home. Probably a good thing...

same here. However when you start living alone it is harder to spend nights drinking because no one will make you a nice breakfast or make up a room or anything at all.

by the way, got overheated today while riding

since it is not hot anymore wore long sleeves and found myself dizzy at the destination, when wind did not cool down anymore

the only times with same dizziness were when starting to climb mountains during the summer heat

I am still in summer gear here.....but definitely chilly early morning

I think I went out just before midday in the end

But niot good to overheat. Was it just that you were overdressed?

simply overdressed. Long sleeved warmed clothing is not really suitable for +26C

Still quite warm there then. We are in high teens, which is perfect.

26 definitely feels chilly after 36 but not a reason to dress up, especially for a physical activity - did not think about it too much before going out

high teens are the best for cycling

you should go back to Holland!

:))) really want to try to cycle around there

every year during the Golden Week which is in the beginning of May I go for a touring around Japan

it is the best weather for cycling during that time but apparently in Tokyo only

right about 20~25C

yes it is good. Go to google maps and have a look for a place, Texel. It is a small island off the coast of northern Holland. Small roads, dunes, sheep....perfect

It is possible to get a car ferry across and to spend the day there....idyllic

googled it out. Beautiful place!

see also flickr.com/photos/peterhurford/collections/72157631365557430

from my 2 visits there

beautiful environment for cycling

on your pictures the place looks much better

ooh, daughter is ready to go....off out for food. See you later/tomorrow

see you!

@PeteH @PeteH I'm using Eclipse ADT. I tried the Android Studio Beta but it wasn't usable at that stage. It could be better now.

@Mσᶎ @Mσᶎ Thanks; I'll check them out. I've been in contact with the Australian Electric Vehicle Association also. The more info the better!

@nhinkle @nhinkle How did the crater lake ride go? Tell all!

morning Andy!