2019 wrap up

A productive year. Migrated over 30 websites to a new server and released our new WordPress theme. Gave a talk at WordCamp Sydney as well.

Graded to 2nd kyu brown belt in karate mid-year, Alex at the end of the year, both with distinction. Travelled to Finland, Denmark and Sweden for the first time and took my first dog and reindeer sled rides. Trips to Singapore, Malaysia, the Gold Coast, Canberra and Melbourne as well.

Watched two Harry Potter movies in concert and three Star Wars movies. Then there was The Rise of Skywalker at the cinema, including a midnight screening.

Walked the Relay for Life at Cronulla and my feet were in an awful state by the end, but we raised over the target for cancer research.

After all that I was absolutely exhausted by the middle of the year and now at the end as well. Achieved so much, but never really got a chance to celebrate it. Now, it doesn't feel like celebration time. Sydney has been smothered with smoke for two months now and there is no relief from the fires.

It's frightening to think about what the next decade will bring.

Karate championships and Wordcamp Sydney

As the end of the year approaches life just gets busier. Fresh from going down to Melbourne the day before it was time to compete in the club's karate championships.

Alex did really well with golds in the pee wee open kumite and pee wee team blockers competitions and I got a silver in the over-35's kata, my only event.

Next day, his laser tag birthday party.

Then a week of panic as I tried to assemble my presentation for WordCamp Sydney on the Science of WordPress. I ended up writing most of it on Thursday and Friday, about 4,000 words. It was too long, but I think it went okay. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I'd be!

The crowd seemed to be mainly non-technical, so the main benefit that I got was, I think, seeing the kind of information our internal customers receive from external agencies. There were a few other ideas related to client interactions and search as well that could prove useful.

Now back to the grind with more to come...

Sutherland Shire Relay for Life 2019

Over 8 hours of walking, more than 60,000 steps, 30 minutes sleep and two very blistered feet.

This year I joined the Dark Fire Fitness team in the Cancer Council's Sutherland Shire Relay For Life to raise funds for cancer research and treatment.

After Alex's tennis tournament I arrived at midday to Don Lucas Reserve at Cronulla to find most of the other members already there. We had a simple marquee and small tent setup. The previous day I'd spent the afternoon and evening deep frying cekodok pisang (banana fritters), karaage chicken and inchi kabin (Malaysian spiced chicken) to share amongst the team.

The relay involves maintaining a constant walking (or running for some) relay along the 400 metres track for 24 hours.

I preferred doing the late night shifts after 10 pm to avoid the loud live music blaring out from the main stage, walking for one period between 10 pm  to 1 am, then another between 3 - 4 am when I found it too cold to sleep.

I had my bag decked out with electroluminescent wire and a Microbit programmed to display animations and the current temperature on its LEDs. The lowest it showed was 12 degrees Centigrade.

By the end of that last walk my body had well and truly enough, my feet too blistered to continue. I staggered to the only food truck still open, a poffertjes stall, and carried my little batter balls and some ice cream off to the food tent, which offered a modicum of warmth and shelter. They tasted so good.

Then I managed to fall asleep in a camp chair for about half and hour, waking to see the sunrise. Somehow I dragged myself up for another few laps before the relay closed at 10 am, just as the rain started to fall. Whatever pain I felt was nothing compared to what cancer sufferers go through and it felt special to have a chance to high five survivors as we did those final laps.

It was good to chat to the other members, who I know through karate, as we walked and to have some rare quiet time alone to listen to a podcast. The reserve is also in a great location to watch aircraft on their take-off or landing approaches into Sydney Airport.

I could barely walk through Miranda after B and Alex picked me up this morning and, once home, enjoyed a hot shower before falling fast asleep for a few hours.

I'm looking forward to doing it again next year, but with some better preparation and hopefully somewhere warm to sleep.

Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lego robots, driving north and piloting planes

The term one holidays are over and what a break it's been, if break is the right way to describe it. I do feel kind of broken.

It started, for me, with the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Concert. The next day I joined Alex and his friend mountain biking at Wylde Park and managed to stack it, giving myself some painful bruises and scrapes. I think that's it for me and mountain biking.

While I worked for a few days Alex attended a couple of Lego EV3 Mindstorms robotics workshops at ANSTO. He especially enjoyed the sensing and data logging session.

Then it was holidays, with my longest time behind the wheel driving up to Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie and the Gold Coast.

I had one day of work in the final week and it felt like it was the whole week packing into that one day, while Alex and B went swimming at the Olympic Park Aquatic Centre. Maybe I developed an allergy to work, but I felt pretty sick over the weekend.

B, Alex, and Alex's friend drove down to Nowra for some adventures in the trees while I stayed home sick in bed, but was well enough the next day to visit the Flight Experience open day and spend some time in the 737 simulator.

We also visited the excellent Star Wars Identities exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum. The well constructed exhibits make you think about who you are and how you have been shaped. They also house some fascinating models, costumes and plans from the movies. The intricacies of the constructions have to be seen to be believed.

Back to work, back to karate for me on Monday, but one pupil-free day more for Alex. Now it's time to plan the next break.

3 Days of Winter School Holidays

Just about finished the third day of the winter school holidays and already:

• Made a heartbeat flashing birthday card using Chibi lights.
• Did two hours of karate
• Chilled out during medieval reenactments at Winterfest
• Donuts and pies at Berry (plus a birthday party)
• Finished the Multivariate Calculus in Machine Learning Course
• Almost finished editing a technical document for B
• Helped Alex program the MicroBit and built touch buttons as lift controls*
• Took him for a hair cut
• Made pesto
• Did my work
• Watched a little bit of Runaway on SBS and wondered if some people in the robotics group were like Gene Simmons character.

Not sure how to survive the whole holidays at this rate!

Over the same period last year I was with the family in Nagoya, Takayama and Unazuki Onsen in Japan after doing the Northernmost and Easternmost stations in Hokkaido. Poor Japan is suffering severe flooding again. Last year it was Kyushu, this time Southern Honshu and Shikoku. 

* More information later. 

Emergency broadcasts

The air is fragrant with smoke, the sky transected with grey. Since last night we have been told to stay at home and defend our house from ember attack.

Bush fires are a fact of life in this area. Back in 1994 my wife was living with her family in another part of this suburb and I was in Canberra, proving updates to the world over Internet Relay Chat based upon television reports.

Now as a resident of the affected area I have a personal interest in how information about the fire is communicated. The nature of media has changed since then and I've got some thoughts about the coverage of the bush fires from a local perspective.

Expectations

We live in the Information Age and as such expect to have access to instantaneous and detailed information about events. The better the information you have, the better you can plan your actions. That is true both for those fighting the fire and those potentially affected by it.

I'm not certain how much information is gathered and available to the fire service from assets on the ground, in the air and in space. It would be interesting to find out. Potentially a lot, but combining that information into something useful for making decisions would be a challenging task.

I can imagine a mesh of sensors on firefighters, fire trucks, drones, aircraft and static assets all sending information back to base to be processed and combined by artificial intelligence. Challenging indeed.

And how to make that information available to the public?

Traditional media

During emergencies we are expected to turn to television, as I did in 1994, and radio for information. I did both but found the experience somewhat disappointing. Being a Saturday night the commercial television stations were more concerned with sports events and the sole free-to-air 24 hour news station, ABC News 24, was primarily filled with non-current news programming or reports on the airstrikes in Syria. This is the problem with being an underfunded national broadcaster, most of your audience are unaffected by regional fires.

Instead you are suggested to turn to ABC Local Radio, which suddenly presents an issue. Who has an AM radio outside of their car these days? I've got an old cassette player downstairs, but if the power went out I'd be in trouble finding any big batteries for it. Most devices run on something smaller.

I still have some FM radios in older mobile phones, though they too are being phased out by manufacturers. Still, it's a pity they don't have an FM broadcast instead. It does suggest I should buy a small AM capable radio, which would have the advantage of picking up the cricket as well!

Fortunately you can listen to ABC Local Radio streamed over the internet, but this takes up valuable bandwidth in emergencies and the infrastructure is more vulnerable to destruction than a distant radio transmitter.

Much as I like the ABC, the other downside of having to listen out for updates over the radio is putting up with their regular programming in between. I just have a different taste to music.

Social media and the Web

The other major source of information these days is social media. Everyone thinks it's something new, but as mentioned above, I was using it back in 1994!

There are useful websites such as the official Fires Near Me and Google's Crisis Map. The issue with the former is the very limited information it provides.

I followed updates from the NSW Rural Fire Service Twitter account, which shared interesting line scan maps of fire areas and videos, and local Facebook pages.

The problem with social media is information pollution. Official updates on Twitter get lost in streams of irrelevant updates from other accounts and on Facebook masses of non-time ordered questions and comments from ordinary (or worse, narcissistic) citizens. There is also the big issue of incorrect or malicious information (so called "fake news") can be inserted into these streams.

There should be an app for that

If one doesn't exist already I'm thinking it would be useful to have an official emergency warnings app for mobile phones. The app would have the following features:

• An ability to detect the user's location or allow them to subscribe to other locations (useful when you are outside the area)
• Emergency push broadcasts (eg imminent tsunami or new fire detected in your area)
• On demand lookup as well as broadcast streaming of updates 
• Interrupt media streams when updates are broadcast, allowing the user to listen to locally stored or streamed music or video without missing updates
• Audio and video output as well as text (user selects).
• Provide maps of affected areas and relevant transport updates.

Maybe there could be a forum or social media component to it focused only on that event, but not sure if that would be necessary or just too much trouble.

Might get chatting with some people at work to see what is already out there and what they think.

Right now the conditions have eased and it looks like we should be able to get a good night's sleep tonight. Even if we haven't as yet been directly affected it's certainly been a good opportunity to consider our disaster preparedness. And many, many thanks to all the emergency services for working so very hard to keep us safe. They are fantastic.

2018

Here, in the first hours of 2018, and I cannot sleep. Outside the open windows of this Avalon beach house the waves pound furiously at the sand and rocks, as if trying their best to erase them from this Earth. Celebratory searchlights still dance in threes across the clouded sky, competing with the flashes of yellow lightning from an offshore storm, as the roar of the waves obscures the thunder.

The sea breeze gradually cools this hot upstairs room in which three people attempt to sleep on two pushed together single beds, but the open windows also allow in the tempest outside.

Now the pop pop pop of illegal fireworks released in the park by the beach wakes them briefly.

I should be tired like the others, worn out as they are from fighting the waves on the beach and each other with glow sticks turned magic weapons. But the world outside is trying to tell a story, its unfamiliarity calling out in the dark to we of the further inland.

"Come out, let us embrace you, chill you, sweep you away," demands the sea.

Gradually, unwilling to gaze too long into the grey world outside, the constantly dancing song lulls, and I feel myself ready to dream its magic and the new year, in hope of one less tumultuous than the reality outside.

Another car through the garden

It was about a quarter to eleven and we were just getting ready to sleep after watching some Highway Patrol repeats earlier in the night. Then we heard the sound of cars hooning around. Then a screech and a loud crash.

Not again.

Almost to the month, four years after a young drunk driver had crashed into the shrubs between our neighbour and us another driver had passed through the same space and crashed into our neighbour's house.

Along the way he demolished our letter box, hedge and most of the shrubs planted after the first incident, then down a retaining wall to land on top of our neighbour's trailer, his car just touching the lower brick wall of the house.

Fortunately the 23 year old driver was just shaken and the house survived unscathed but for a broken window and ruined flowerpots.

It could have been much worse. A couple of weeks ago another young driver in Illawong died after losing control of his car, rolling it and being flung out.

Our driver, from a house just down the street, was undoubtedly speeding in his Volkswagen Golf, as do many on this stretch of road. His brother had been just behind in his Alfa Romeo. Their specialist auto insurer Shannons was indicative of their likely revhead nature.

On the back of the car was an Apple computers sticker. Don't believe them when they say they don't crash.

A crowd of neighbours gathered around the accident. I called the police, but it was the tow trucks that arrived first, then the fire brigade, the cops and the ambulance. The freelance journalists. Then more tow trucks.

The police collected statements, the paramedics gave him a once over and presumably tested for alcohol and drugs. The fireman had little to do. For most of the time it was standing around watching the tow truck drivers attempt to haul the car back up the way it came.

By the way, don't trust any insurance advice tow truck drivers give. They just want your money. The emergency services, on the other hand, were great.

Gradually the crowds drifted away. The freelancers collared me for an interview on camera. I misstated some facts but it was way past midnight by now and I wasn't thinking straight.

The story actually featured on the Channel 9 and Channel 7 morning news, surprisingly.

Residents of Illawong have described hearing a large crash as a car landed on top of a trailer overnight. #9News pic.twitter.com/uFrSOngHj6

— Nine News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) May 16, 2017

Car loses control of car in Illawong. 23-year-old driver's car landed on a trailer on Fowler Road. #Illawong #7News pic.twitter.com/7fPoOxUC61

— 7 News Sydney (@7NewsSydney) May 16, 2017

So now we've got no letterbox, our beautiful hedge has been trimmed far more than I intended (granted it needed trimming) and a pair of lovely callistemon and lilli pilli shrubs is probably gone. Insurance won't pay for the garden and we are wondering if someday a car will plough into Alex's bedroom.

It's not just us. Apparently the house at the corner has had three cars in their yard and the are lamp posts and street signs suffering frequent damage. All because the idiots in this area (like most others) think they have the right to show off their non-existent driving "skills" and put everyone else in danger. I am tired of people bitching about speed limits in residential areas like this when the evidence is in - they aren't the great drivers they think they are.

They are murderous f'ing idiots.

Clouds and red jackets

I woke this morning from a horrible nightmare where our team had been taken over by an extroverted marketing type whose idea of an introduction was to make us wear glittery red jackets and sing company songs. Uggh!

The day was filled with spectacular clouds as an offshore low sent huge cumulonimbus formations our way. I watched aircraft fly around these white and grey terrors which towered over the Sydney skyline.

All they needed was some thunder and lightning.

Late tonight, as I took the dog out, there were still clouds around the horizons. I saw a bright orange meteor fall relatively slowly down towards the west.

Eyes open in my dreams and reality. It's an amazing world!

The game of limited choice

Do you dream of riches and a place where anything that you desire can be yours?

I often dream of the opposite.

One of my favourite fantasies is of something I like to call the Game of Limited Choice. It goes like this:

Imagine that you are in a situation where your options of things to buy, see or do are limited. Use your creativity to innovate and make the best out of the situation.

I've played this game for a long, long time. When I was little our family would holiday in farm cottages where the indoor entertainment (sometimes the weather wasn't great) was limited to old war adventure and Readers Digest paperbacks and maybe a black and white television.

Later on I would make lists of the minimum number of Star Wars toys and model train items I would need, imagining that I was in a country town with only a few shops (pretty easy to imagine, as I was living in a caravan in the country at the time with most of our possessions in storage).

An updated version of it might be:

I'm at the airport with only my phone, wallet and passport. Use the shops to buy everything you need, likes clothes and travel goods, for a trip overseas.

Another more recent one:

It's Christmas Eve and you are stuck in a motel with your family and no food or presents for the next day. The only place open is a petrol station convenience store. How can use their limited stock to make a Christmas celebratory meal and give everyone presents?

Computers are a favourite and one where the game has been very real, especially trying to complete university assignments on old or software limited devices like an IBM XT clone or a Sharp Zaurus hand-held while travelling around Europe. You certainly wish that you had freedom of choice when everything takes longer than it could, but you also feel like you are getting the most you can out of the machine.

Sometimes a plethora of choice can itself be stifling while the Game of Limited Choice is a creative challenge. See how many times you can spot it in my writings here and elsewhere.

Welcome to 2016!

Happy New Year! May 2016 be a good one for you.

One hour until Christmas

Better go to bed, don't want Santa to skip our house.

Going to bed before midnight would be nice. So would waking up to a quiet Christmas day spent with just the three of us (and dog). Sadly not. Instead it's a drive up to the Insular Peninsula for a party with one side and back south by the evening for a dinner with the other.

I'm exhausted. I've been pushing to get this super awesome WordPress theme ready for testing before my co-developer, the designer goes on holiday. Finally set up the test sites last night and then wrote up the authoring and admin instructions from about 7 am and sent them out an hour before work closes for the Christmas break.

Then there were all the other support requests.

Alex has been on holiday for a week now so I had to look after him at the same time, meaning a lot of the recent work was done late at night after he slept. Then there was Christmas shopping and preparing dishes for tomorrow.

I'm knackered!

Oh darn, I just remember I have to make another layer of jelly and let it cool before pouring.

Merry Christmas.

Doughman and the karate tournament

I had a very strange dream this morning. I was in a Will Ferrell movie. He was a villain called Doughman and I was fighting him. At one I almost defeated him but a small nodule of dough remained and began expanding into two plates of flat dough. I kept pounding them but Ferrell's face would appear in the dough to taunt me. So I turned them into two plates of pasta with a tomato sauce. The solution was to eat the pasta in the hope that the stomach acid would kill him.

I woke up then, but you know exactly what would have happened. Yes, Doughman would have become Spewman.

You should note that this dream occurred prior to me taking a big strike to the head at the karate tournament.

I was definitely the Doughman there. Somehow I summoned up the courage to join Alex in competing in our dojo's annual tournament. He's been doing it for almost a year now and has a red belt but I had to give it away for six months due to a foot injury and haven't even graded yet. No other senior white belts were in attendance today. Senior, that makes me feel really old now, especially when Alex is still a Pee Wee!

Me on the left getting belted

Alex in gladiator

Alex did well, adding another silver in kumite to the one he won at the warm up tournament last term. And he won both his matches in the gladiator, though his team did not progress.

Me, I got a bronze in the kata, but that's because there were only three of us competing. And a bumped head in kumite where there were four. But I did score a couple of points and I'm satisfied with that.

The things we do to set a good example for our kids...

So I may not be great at karate, but I reckon I could write a pretty decent movie script. In my sleep.

Stardust and satay

We are all star dust, the stuff of exploding stars. But this post has nothing to do with astronomy. On Saturday we took Alex to Stardust Circus, his first such event under a tent.

I think I was about Alex's age when I first attended a circus, as part of a school outing. It may have been Stardust or, more likely I think, Silver's Circus.

I don't know if circuses have shrunk or perhaps we have just got bigger, but the Big Top didn't seem so big now.

Along the roadside there were animal rights protestors waving placards against the treatment of circus animals. Outside I overhead circus staff claiming it gave them free publicity, but inside the ringmaster was careful to explain that the animals were kept well.

I will not delve into the ethics of showing the lions, including a 8 month old cub, rhesus monkeys, ponies, pigs and other beast, but I found myself liking those components least of all anyway. Except for the dogs. But then I know how much dogs love the interactions and challenges, assuming that they were treated well.

Animal feats seem so unnecessary when compared with the displays of human acrobatics and the clown humour, both of which Alex loved best as well.

The performances seemed less spectacular and less polished than I recall, but perhaps again that is through the eyes of an adult.

I had to laugh at the music in the introduction to the trapeze act. Back at my first circus they played the disco version of Star Wars before the trapeze. A decade or so later, at a Silver's Circus performance in Queensland it was the same.

This time they played the full orchestral main title to Star Wars. It's good that somethings don't really change.

There was a gorgeous rainbow on our way home.

Sunday saw us at the Malaysian Festival at Pyrmont Bay Park. We had a pleasant, though packed, tram ride down there and enjoyed some Malaysian snacks. The satay from Loong Fong was really good and I love the Seremban siu pau from Sweet Rita's Nyonya Treats. Pity I can't find a restaurant for them both, Loong Fong only serves bak kwa at their Chatswoord outlet. Bak kwa is a form of sweet and spicy pork jerky that I have utterly gone off after being force fed it for our daily breakfast (along with almond jelly) by one of B's Aunts during my first trip to Singapore.

The construction work around Darling Harbour is very impressive, but I hope they return the family atmosphere once they are done. We had to purchase a Chinese costume for Alex's Mandarin class presentation. Fortunately, there is a small stall at Paddy's Markets that sells such things.

And so ended the first week of school holidays.