Hic Sunt Dracones

The original video is super.

Zack and Miri was awesome. Awesome with a capital O. I’m a Kevin Smith fan boy and I have spoken.

You know, the more I think about it (so far it’s been a good two minutes), the idea of Pride and Prejudice + Predator = Pride and Predator just makes more and more sense. As the Guardian says, “the seven-foot extraterrestrial [will] give the characters from Pride and Prejudice something more immediate to worry about than making advantageous marriages.” And I’m all in favour of that.

If I’m ever a rocker (excluding my present situation of being a rocker who rocks out) and I release an album, I hope to God that I can come up with a sales plan as awesome as this guy’s; Josh Freese – you might remember him as the former drummer of NiN (I don’t, but you might). Legit or not, it’s awesome.

The Real Shaq on Twitter has always got positive press, and here’s some more. Woo.

A list of the tabs I have had open over the last week or so. Well, actually the ones that I still have open presently, with the oldest one being about a week and a half old?

1. One for Rays Bikes, the store I bought my bike at. Nice website Ray.
2. The Hardest Job in Football, a The Atlantic article on the directing that goes into TV production for NFL games. It’s true, I like NFL more than F1. You know where to find me. (putting an “a” in front of “The Atlantic” seems somehow naff)
3. Darth Vader in an Energizer Battery Ad. Someone at work look askance at me when I went “Woo, HA!” and then I couldn’t find the Energizer Bunny making the noise, but I found Darth Vader.
4. Heartbeats by The Knife, you’ll most likely know this as the song from the bouncing balls down SF streets for Sony, redone by José González but I prefer this version. I think it rocks.
5. Said José’s version.
6. A cover of Massive Attack’s Teardrop by the once more said José.
7. Heartbeats by The Knife, a different URL.
8. Heartbeats by The Knife, the same URL as the last one.
9. A google search for the director of the Heartbeats video, because I’d love to know the provenance of the skateboarding footage. In a Pattern Recognition kind of way. (I opened another tab to go make sure I was referencing the right book. (I’ve closed it now))
10. The home page of Johannes Nyholm, as per the Goog.
11. Bacon wrapped in meat wrapped bacon wrapped in heart attack. NY Times article on culinary stupid.
12. Derailer, Not Derailleur! a site I was checking out after writing about my boring day when I was investigating the possible difference between derailers and derailleurs, and if any non cyclists ever used the word.
13. The Duke of Normandy’s wiki page. After some William the Conqueror love from our previous mad wannabe linguist.
14. Boy With A Coin – a song Nic likes, and I don’t. Well, I don’t like / find suitable for about 89% of my life.
15. Phew, Ben found me my WOOOO HA! I was still looking for an energizer bunny? What the hell, it’s a MAN baby YEAH.
16. He also found that damn Miss Green. Nothing out lasts her (pants).
17. My sex isn’t on fire. This guy’s is. He should get it looked at. And so should you. Not you. You though.
18. Sealand (principality thereof) coinage, on EBAY. Why the hell not?
19. A specific coin of the type.
20. A google search where I was trying to figure out what the hell you call those things that you only seem to have at New Year’s that you blow into, have bits of paper roll out / inflate and make an annoying squeaking noise.
21. The Cook Islands have a commemorative Playboy coin. Nic found it. He’ll claim otherwise.
22. Stewie’s love song. If I ever thought I could use this list, it would almost be worth memorising :) Name 20.. name six more, name five more. Go fuck yourself.
23. … Then I went and watched Jenny from the Block. I’m sorry.
24. The Way of Shadows (The Night Angel Trilogy) at Amazon. Waz tells me I should read these. The series is completed already! I’m there.
25. Snow and ice create chaos in Britain’s deep freeze my sister and friends suffer under ice from the sky. About the time our train lines were melting.
26. And after the train lines melted, people started dieing. Which sucks.
27. The FiveThirtyEight guy does the Oscars. I thought Heath was an awesome Joker, so, er, go him.
28. The Communard’s wiki page. Go watch the video for their version of Don’t Leave Me This Way. That guy dances like a Dance Commander.
29. Dance Commander.
30. Which led me to Gay Bar, wait till the very end for the random Japanese voice over. (I once worked in a gay bar. True story.)
31. What the hell, did they censor “nuclear” and “war”? Oh yes, apparently they did. Huh?
32. Electric Six and their Wiki page. Together at last.
33. The Great Buck Howard @ Apple. Being John Malkovich might have been the first time I saw him in a film?
34. Planet 51 @ Apple. Safely described as “cute.”
35. Eden Log @ Apple. Safely described as what the hell. (But cool).
36. Fanboys @ Apple. AWESOME. I wouldn’t really consider myself a Star Wars fan boy per se. More of a general all around fan boy. But any film with Shatner in the credits as “Captain James T Kirk” gets my money. Also, I laughed out loud (for reals) when they drive through the sign at light speed :)

Skills Like This @ Apple. And once more, this will get some of my money. Dude also needs some computer hacking skills though.

37. Some random BBC article .
38. A less random BBC article on the NY air crash.
39. MOAR BBC. This time privacy and the FTC.
40. Warsaw – it’s a bitch. I was actually looking for some footage of “This is my SALUTE”, but the line “we have a kick ass Ukranian Plan B” lurks forever within me awaiting it’s chance.

40 seems like a lot. They’re all gone now. Is it any wonder I don’t get shit did?

Nerd-PS: I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised that Firefox has manged to exit and then gracefully restart with approximately that number of tabs over the last week, especially with the above average number of youtube tabs, those things have historically wrecked things.

So, I finally bought myself a bike. I had the borrowing of a bike from a friend of mine for a large portion of last year, but eventually had to give it back. I’ve been meaning to pick one up for myself but never (typically) got around to it. But hockey season is starting up soon and that means hockey training, and that means another two nights a week where my simple train to work then walk home plan will evolve into something more complex involving and then walk to the tram and then (after training (no relation)) tram back and then walk home. And that takes too long. It is a short distance to hockey, but the time involved in the walking and the tramming is excessive. On a bike it is over quick smart.

Which reminds me, I officially became a member for the Melbourne biking community at some point last winter, got caught up in tram tracks in the rain and fell off my bike. In my flash new rain coat. Silly me. Fell right in the middle of the road, which was bad, but the girl in the car behind me stopped, and so that was much better. Jumped up and got out of the road as quick as I could, and noticed that the guy in the car in the oncoming lane had stopped too, and had his window down asking if I was OK, as was the little lady next to me on the footpath. So that made me feel warm towards these Australians. Even if they are a bunch of convicts.

I’ve always sort of wondered how you get your tyre stuck in a tram track, and now I know, or rather, now I know what I think the mean, which in my case was more of a “I try to turn a corner across the tracks, my wheel loses all friction (in the rain see) and my wheel spins out from under me” kind of thing. End result, me on the ground.

But anyway, that was some months ago, and I needed a new bike, so off I went a looking for one.

I have been riding a mountain bike, but it was too small, and had silly front shocks on it, and silly fat tyres (and of course not mine, but still), which are all well and good if you’re riding around on mountains, or hills, or even goat tracks, but no good if you’re trying to get to and from work at break neck speeds. Or potter off to hockey training. Or zip up the road to touch.

Yet, I don’t want no sissy road bike, for, well, I’d no doubt break it by going off a curb somewhere in the CBD, or by bumping my way along a track to get to the hockey field or something. So, road bikes are out.

The solution: the commuter bike, or using slightly sexier nomenclature, the flat bar road bike. Yeah. It essentially looks mostly like a mountain bike, but it comes with thin tyres, and your riding stance is more up and down, with larger tyres for faster goings on.

I pretty much knew this at the start of my search, er, so my search was kinda brief.

But no, actually it wasn’t. Well, it wasn’t a vast search; it was two trips to some shops. The two bike stores near my flat, and then two stores in town that I got put onto by some people in the know. My initial budget was $500, based on the fact that I knew I’d spend more than my budget. Because I always see something shinier, and betterer and rush off gunning for it. So, I tried to self limit. Now this is a lot less than a lot of what we could call “decent” bikes. But I don’t really want a “decent” bike, in that what I really want is a bike that doesn’t suck, and will get me to where I want to go in decent shape. Not a rad racing bike, or a hot mountain bike. So, sure, arbitrary $500 seemed like the go.

And of course basically the first few bikes I look at are $700, and I go, yeah well, I knew that would happen. And adjust my terms of reference accordingly. So I look around at the range and realise I don’t really know what I’m doing, beyond the “got two wheels, some brakes, gears and the seat pole will go high enough?” so blindly check out assorted bikes and try and find one that I think is cool. Get various options thrust at me by assorted salesman maxing out at around $1200. The main points of difference basically being that I’m quite enamoured with disc brakes, and vaguely into shocks if they can be locked out for speedy riding. (This is because I’m a pretty heavy guy, and have a history of buckling wheels as I ride willy nilly off of curbs, not jumps or other eXtreme activities, but simple urban riding has some bumps, and I don’t want to mangle my wheel any sooner than I must, but you want a lockout (which stops the shocks from working) for when you’re on the road proper and trying to zip along at maximum pace)

Aside from that, really the differences tend to be “better components” by which the mean the derailleur (try and find a use for this word when not discussing bikes) and or possibly brakes. Nobody ever specified exactly HOW these better components were better, but I’m sure they are somehow. Only I didn’t really care. Funky disk brakes though, now they are cool (or at least look cool).

But eventually I decided no, I think the ~$699 bikes (one of) should do me. And headed off to two stores in the city to see what I could see there. I saw a collection of bikes, some at the appropriate price range and some that roughly matched my requirements. Decided I’d think about it over night and wandered out. Only to bump into my friend Debs.

Debs told me I needed to hit up a store in Preston (half a dozen stops up the Epping/Hurstbridge line from me) as they were a decent store, where she’d often found a good deal.

Another store? Why not, Debs isn’t silly.

That night I had a poke around on the Internet for this store (Rays Bikes) and another couple of stores to see what was around. Found a bike they had that looked like my bag (baby), and although it was $899 it looked like my perfect bike, so I was interested to at least check it out, and possibly try and haggle them down a bit (I suck at haggling).

This was Friday night, the next day was Saturday, or as we like to call it “The hottest day in Melbourne in recorded history” but that’s for tomorrow. Just be aware that it was hot as I got up, onto the train and set off in search of a bike store.

Arrived in Preston and wandered along the main road on a hunch. Found the store (hurrah, I guessed right when I guessed left (yes I could have looked up the address the night before, but I like to throw some exploring into my wanderings, and you can always ask people / your phone / your friends in other countries with the Internet if you get horribly lost))

Discovered they didn’t have the bike I wanted in a size suitable for me. Curses! Had a ride on it anyway as it looked so cool. Yup, too small. Had a poke around the shop and spotted another GT that looked similar. No awesome remote-lockout shocks, and no disc brakes, but essentially similar enough and importantly, half the price. That’s right, for the low low price of $440 all this could be mine.

Decided I should think about it, no impulse buying for me. So asked where the McDonald’s was. No McDonald’s. Burger King (Hungry Jacks in .COM.AU) oh, down the road. So walked down there, got myself a large drink and a 50c cone.

Sat and read the paper, ate my ice cream and drank my drink as I looked out of air conditioned comfort into the oh so very hot.

Got bored with the paper and decided $440 was the right price. Walked back to shop and told the guy I’d take it.

Done and done.

So I’m now the (somewhat) proud owner of a GT Transeo 5.0 (the initial target was the GT Transeo 2.0 Disc.

Stay tuned for next X’s episode when our hero says “It’s hot!”

Nervous me is nervous. I’m currently sitting at the back of a boardroom waiting for my turn to stand up and DANCE MONKEY DANCE.

I’m back in Sydney for phase two of a project roll out. Last time I was here I had four people to train in around seven hours plus one on four action for most of the next day. Last time I was here people tried to blow up an ATM across the road from my hotel. This time I have ~24 people to train in four hours. Ooosh. I’ll still have most of tomorrow, but it will be me versus ~20 people, and even at my best I could never defeat that many.

I am however in full on corporate stooge, I am wearing my pimp suit for the first time, purchased on sale pre Christmas, I have my birthday cufflinks and I have, er well I don’t have a tie. Suck it ties. This will ideally trick people into thinking I know what I’m doing.

So far I’ve been vaguely listening to the various business groups throwing information at MY users, (which is to say that they were gathered from around the east coast to learn at the feet of the guru) but someone in marketing got wind of it, curses.

This afternoon it will be my turn to throw info, and I will have to use my steam powered shovel because I’ve got a lot of information to get through, and this time, unlike my three (NSW) pilot users, the newly minted users won’t be able to pick up the phone and call someone who cares (me). So, go team teaching and learning!