REverberations - Sydney

Cash - Gone

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:59:38 -0500

Have a quick look at the image to the right. It's from a Liverpool Champion story about Liverpool Council heavy-handedly enforcing a 10m from an intersection parking rule, violation of which results in a $197 fine. Here, two cars would be fined for not being greater than 10m from the intersection.
Do you, as a member of society, think 10m is warranted? Look at the silver car in the picture - that's the approximate position I parked my car within Liverpool Council's boundaries, from where I cycle to Parramatta on occasion. I don't have a photo or proof, but I believe I would actually have been further from the corner, but I'm not claiming to have been more than 10m.
For the same amount of financial penalty, I could have driven between 10 and 20km/h over the speed limit, an action which statistically impacts the safety of others. Unlike, say, parking 6m from an intersection.
Sure, I'll pay - it's the law after all - however I won't bother to pick small parking spaces anymore for my biodiesel-powered tiny 5L/100km car (last tank 5.3L/100km, including towing 750kg mower/trailer combo at times and driving "with spirit" at others) to fit now so that others can have the larger ones for their land yacht fuel-guzzlers. There were plenty of huge open spaces away from an intersection I could have parked in.
Bugger the rest of you people looking for parking spots, it seems.

New Job!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:22:29 -0500

Well, sorta.

A year or so ago when the team I originally started with in 2001 was transferred to Parramatta office, I used the excuse to stay in town with a different team and also move to a Technical Lead role for the experience.
Now things have changed a little - the team in town got moved across the bridge along with everyone else from that office, and also we have moved out to Picton. The combined two hours each-way commute was bearable for the transition period, but something had to give.
Coupled with this the old team at Parramatta had some internal re-organisiation, and the Team Leader role became vacant. I was asked to step up, and as of Monday, that's what I'm doing.
So yes, I'm now a manager and have the Crackberry to prove it. I view it as a challenge, but figure I wouldn't have been asked if people thought I wasn't capable.
I haven't even had time to unpack my boxes, it's been go-go-go since I walked in the door, so there will be precious little rest time it seems.

As I type this I'm cruising along in the train to Parramatta (using the rare-as-hen's-teeth Cumberland line trains), and out the window I can see where I cycled yesterday. There's a "rail trail" from Liverpool to Parramatta which is pretty good, but could do with the signs being replaced so I don't waste 30 minutes next time following the wrong railway line. But I guess that's what GPS is for. Liverpool station is also a poorly-designed bottle neck for an "interchange" with a cycleway.

I'm still balancing the train times to arrive at the appropriate work-life balance - this took me a little while at North Sydney and some experimentation appears to still be required.

Thanks Rail Corp!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:45:53 -0500

Dear Guy in the Railcorp Uniform I just sat next to on the way into town,

Perhaps next time you don't have to leg-spread so wide your mother would be ashamed, and then look with me in scorn as I attempt to squeeze myself into the gap. Or at least have the decency to move your legs so that I can fit in some non-yoga-position manner.

If you decide to continue with your understanding of the amount of personal space required by each traveller on CityRail, perhaps you could approach your employer to re-instate first class? It's not like you're even paying for your ticket so you'll get the free upgrade I'm sure.

Personally, I'd settle for just more trains so that maybe one of the two that shot through Penshurst without stopping before this one arrived would have taken on some passengers, giving each one of them more room.

Oh yes, this was a train at 7 am, and this was the last available seat in the carriage. Otherwise your body odours would have put me off way too much.

Southern Sydney Waterways Ride

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:41:55 -0500

I took advantage of the nice weather to head off on a aimless ride around the area today. If the forecast is to be believed, that might be all the riding I get in the next week or so.

Thanks City Rail

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:44:27 -0500

I guess you couldn't help the train in front of us "breaking down" while we were stopped at Sydenham this morning.

But then announcing we had to all walk to platform three was a bit annoying - isn't there any points outside the station to switch across to another track? So, along the platform, up the stairs and down to platform three me and a thousand or so other people go. Me with shaky knees and all.

All on platform three, the first train there is full and we won't all fit. Probably not much could been done about that, but the announcement board says next train in two minutes so who really minds that. Along platform three we go.

Then the announcement board says 26 minutes. We look across to platform 5 where we came from to see out train, empty, heading off towards the city.

Thanks for not letting us know the "breakdown" no longer applied and we should go back to get our train.

Up from three we go to the top, thanks for your staff's unhelpful attitude. Oh well, they hate their job, down platform five we go again. There's a train coming by now.

Thanks for not holding that train for us as we all rush down to get it, even though it's nowhere near full.

Thanks for the same platform guard who sent an entire train-load of people away not thinking that they might want to get back on the first possible train now that they are working again. Thanks to him for saying "I didn't close the doors" to our protests when we had all seen him holding up his flag (indicating to the on-train guard he could go). Thanks to him for trying to tell us our original train hadn't actually proceeded to the city, when several hundred of us had seen it had.

Come on, bring it, we just love being treated like this.

No wonder I enjoy cycling to work so much more. People who think riding is too stressful compared to ShittyRail have no idea.

Can't wait for this super-busy week to be over and I've decided to cycle even more than my 1-2 day average recently.

Aaah the blog...

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:37:46 -0600

It's a sign that life is busy when I don't post here for ages. It's been beyond busy recently. I stare at the front page now and then and note the stagnation, knowing only I can change it. And then something else comes and steals my attention.

No matter, life is going well! Miss Phoebe is for the most part much improved. She still has times when she has been awake for hours and is so tired that she won't sleep or feed. They're tough and she needs constant attention to sort her out. Liz is unfortunately copping most of this as I'm busy at work and still with bands. Several times of the years I've considered dropping back my band commitment, and each time we've discussed it and agreed it can continue. Now I'm not so sure, it's just not fair on Liz to make her do so much while I'm off having a good time elsewhere.

As part of the process of spending more time at home, I purchased a shiny new bike. On the first ride into work on it I cut ten minutes or so of my fastest time on the old bike, so there should be less time spent commuting and more at home. I spent a long time researching options, considering a few compromises on eBay, but ended up getting exactly what I wanted. An expensive way to do it, but warranty and reliability are key on a commuter.

It's what they call a Cyclocross bike, dedicated to the sport of Cyclocross, which pretty much nobody knows about. The formula is to take a fast road bike, make it more rugged, make it more comfortable, and add practical features. So it's a bit slower than a "real" road bike but as you can see above, it's still plenty fast!

And at the other end of the commute - work - things are changing too. My team is being restructured out to the Parramatta office, and I'm was really not looking forward to the extra hour's train journey. The bike ride was far more direct and looked not to be too much longer than the ride to the city, but I can't ride every day, due mostly to weather and carrying instruments. From an organisational perspective it makes sense for that team to be with the rest of the people who do similar things, but from a personal perspective Parramatta has nothing at all to appeal to me, and eats into the time with my new family. Even if I don't go out in the city every day, I could if I wanted, whereas what little there is at Parramatta seems to shut down after business hours.

So I got offered a position as technical lead in a different, but similar team, who are remaining in Surry Hills. I've decided to take it for six months, to see how the management thing suits me. If it doesn't very well then I can either revert to my old job out at Parramatta or look to the market for something different.

Enough for now, I need coffee.

Cycling Safety in Sydney

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:22:22 -0500

So, after another successful and safe ride to work this morning (once I'd fixed a flat tire, grr), it's nice to see that the fact everyone seems to 'know' about how amazingly unsafe it is to cycle in Sydney are simply wrong (Original SMH article here).

The main take-away point is that despite a 50% increase in the number of cyclists in the last three years, the number of cyclists killed has halved in the last ten (7 down to 3), and the percentage injured has declined.

So, since 50% of car trips in Sydney are under five kilometres, why not join me and the 3000 other people that ride into the CBD daily? I ride 21km each way, and I still feel so much more refreshed and ready to face the day after riding than being crammed into a CitySnail sardine-tin train.

Don't even get me started on surrounding yourself with 1-3 tonnes of metal and burning up several litres of fossil fuels only to sit in traffic that plenty of others seem to think is a great idea. The truly crazy thing is that I'm much faster through the traffic than they are anyway!

Recent Photos

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:20:11 -0500

I've uploaded a few various photos to my Flickr account showing some of our recent wanderings around the place.

Sydney Planning

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:47:44 -0500

Cycled up to The Rocks last night for a truly inspiring talk by Jan Gehl. This is the Danish guy who has turned global cities into places you might actually want to live, the closest success to home being inner-city Melbourne.

In a move with a change of making me respect a politician, Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore has engaged Jan to provide his views on Sydney, which makes for amazing reading.

(There will apparently be a podcast/vodcast of the talk available here - well worth your time).

I think after our European travels, the main reason I want to live in places like Paris, Amsterdam, Munich or Copenhagen is that they are just great, friendly places to be. Cars have their place outside the center, but the right there in the middle is a place for people. To meet, to be entertained, to relax, and to watch.

Sydney's CBD just is no use for that. The only public spaces worth talking about are disjoint, and at all times as a pedestrian you are less important than the car. Jan's work on other more visionary cities is but a dream here in Sydney.

After the talk, I changed into my cycle gear and pedaled back to Kogarah. In the city traffic, making the best of what cycle 'lanes' are on offer. More nightmare than dream.

Clover, I challenge you to step up to the plate and implement 100% of the recommendations when you get them later this year, as Melbourne did. Perhaps we will be less inclined to consider the Southern city a place to live, which we did much to our disgust after traveling there last year and being blown away by how good an Australian city could be.

Famous! (sorta)

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:25:17 -0500

The folks over at Schmap have quite a good travel resource that I have to admit I'd never heard of.

Until I got a mail from them a little while back asking if they could use one of my Creative Commons-licenced photos in the Sydney edition of their travel guide. You can see the results here - the great 3801 steaming up at Central.

Catchup Blogging

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:46:44 -0600

OK, News time. It's been a while.
I've uploaded some photos to my Flickr account which have titles showing a pictorial version of what we've been doing recently.
There's some from Adelaide (1 2 3 4), some from our recent weekend back up to the Hunter Valley to celebrate our wedding anniversary (yep, it's been over a year now...) (1 2), and even an ugly product of our veggie patch.

Margaret's house has been on the market for a while and is now sold, she's looking for a place to buy and has a few in mind. She may be moving in with us during the change-over period.

So we've re-organised the house a bit. We've now got a separate (small) room devoted to music. It's good to have everything out and in the one place, and I've been inspired to do some recording, helped out with a computer audio interface I found cheap on eBay. Still trying to decide what software I want to use with it though.

The junk that used to be in that room has now sort-of migrated to the spare room, but it could be consolidated to make room for Margaret should the need arise.

Around the house, I've been cleaning out gutters and getting things organised in preparation for the arrival of our water tanks. The fact that it's been raining a lot recently has been annoying us, thinking of the wastage. It looks like we'd have to vote capital-L Liberal to get the government to do something about water recycling, so becoming as detached as possible from it all is appealing.

Put some of the wine from our Hunter trip (came back with three cases!) under the house in a sort-of cellar arrangement. The conditions are good but it's hard to get to. Should be good for medium-long-term storage though.

We headed off to the Whiskey Experience again a few days ago - a great fun evening which we figure is just to raise brand awareness. Not that many people around us were aware of things around themselves by the end of proceedings!

One of Liz's birthday celebrations this year was a trip to the Löwenbräu Keller, something I haven't done for years and an evening we thoroughly enjoyed. The band there seems to do the same show every night, but it's very entertaining. Plus we get to drink great beer and practice our German.

... Which is good, because Sebastian Schnelle (whom we stayed with at least three times in Europe 2002-3 and caught up with again early last year) is back in the country to do his PhD in Brisbane. He and his girlfriend Jana flew into Sydney last week and we caught up a few times. She's still in learn-English mode, so we had a few conversations with me speaking German and her English, and my lack of skill there seemed to give her more confidence.

Oh, and I buggered my knee badly about a month ago, which is the worst it's ever been. I've had plenty of days working from home and far less cycling. I have a specialist appointment next week, so hopefully I can get something done about it.

Another Jersey Kerb gig happened last Friday - the first with Jono playing keyboards and me back on bass after Ed left for England. We played pretty well I thought, but the crowd was both thin and lacking energy. I think we have a job for our manager to get us sorted in a new venue or with some more aggressive advertising. Still great fun though.

Surely that's enough topic-hopping for now. Congratulations if you made it this far!

Organic Food!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:57:32 -0600

Just a quick post to say that we've been getting boxes of organic fruit, veg and other groceries delivered from OrganicFood.com.au for a few months now. Service is great, quality of the food is excellent, and the fact that it just appears at the door once a week is pretty nice with the crazy hours we end up working.
It's always fun to see what has arrived in the mixed box of fruit and veg - all sorts of odd seasonal things turn up such as real raw beetroot, corn on the cob and pineapple, all of which is nice and healthy to eat while a nice change from what we buy when we enter a fruit market.
Look at their prices and then compare to what you actually spend on this sort of stuff and it actually works out pretty good value.

We'll investigate the two separate local fruit and veg markets supposedly starting shortly too.

Ads selling desalination to cost $1.4m

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:56:56 -0600

From today's SMH. $1.4m just for advertising?
According to the propaganda trip we took in school to the electoral center in Canberra, I thought our government was supposed to work something roughly like this:

Vote in people that you think will do the best job running the country.
Let them do "the best job" for their term
At the end of the term, review their progress before deciding who to vote for this time

Where in the above did the elected representatives get to spend our tax money convincing us that their decisions are correct?
In this case, they fairly blatantly aren't - recycling is a far better option that most of the rest of the world uses. Here it's been taken by ignorant people whose dam is almost totally empty as "recycled sewerage" that they just won't drink, instead forming groups called Citizens Against Drinking Sewage.

Why? What better options do you think you have? Do you really think that every glass of water you get out of the tap is brand new, created by God just for you? Nope, we have a limited number of water atoms on this planet, and they go around and around in a big circle.
Water recycling is just shortcutting that a bit.

No matter, we had a friend of ours now in the water tank business over last night and are getting our plans in order to have a couple of tanks installed down the side of our house in a couple of months.

NSW to roll out free WiFi service

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:44:09 -0600

So our state government is attempting to get a clue about wifi then huh?

Go for it I say, but Telstra is a powerful adversary, and underdog Optus looks like it wants to get on your side, so it is undoubtedly going to be a lot more complicated than just plugging in some base stations around the place.

Oh, and how do I ask for my local suburb to be listed as a "major centre" so we can have it out there too?

And where are you going to get your IT staff to implement it all, since there aren't many left in Sydney now?

Congratulations Zadro and Gabriela!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:12:15 -0600

Had a great night at a wedding last night for another of our friends joining the married crowd. Very late, lots of dancing and all done in that Zadro style that you would expect.

Congratulations for the night go also to Baz who managed to write a good-wishes message in the guestbook of another wedding. To be honest that was an easy mistake to make, because the sign located near to the guestbook clearly stated the correct bride and groom names, but still!

Was good to see some far-flung friends again, including a side-trip to the Oatley Hotel, in the middle of renovations. The upstairs is fairly impressive and the new back section should be good too when completed.

Update 1/12/2006: Far more organised than us, they've got some pictures online.

Spring Cycle 2006

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:23:21 -0500

Path cycled 22/10/2006

Feeling a little worse for wear today after a huge cycling day - easily our biggest ever.
It started out with Alina waking us just after five am - she must have known that we needed to get up and organised for the day.
CityRail managed to put on a special train from Penshurst that went directly to North Sydney - our target for the day because it was the start of the Spring Cycle for this year (and the past two we have been to).
The weather wasn't helping - very cold as we pedalled up the hill to the station at this end and even adding some rain to the west as we went across the harbour bridge to scare us about the day's ride. Up the hill to the start at St. Leonards park we were rained on - not what you really want with 50km riding in front of you.
I was a little worried too because in my typical style, I decided that I could make my bike better the night before, and had pulled the bearings apart in my front wheel. What fun! Little ball bearings bouncing all over the place, and then you have to get them back in again...
A quick call to Jono when we arrived at the park confirmed what we had guessed - he was late again, just like last year! No matter, Liz, Dave E and I headed off in the rain to push along the ride.
It seemed to go much faster than last year, and with Dave and I commuting by bike two or three times a week we are much fitter, so this year we kept Liz company most of the time, making a pretty relaxing pace for us boys!

By the end at Olympic Park I felt I could have kept going a lot longer - we sat down for a rest and a chat with some of the other RTA guys on the team, and after a while Jono and uni-mate Pascal turned up. The concept of riding further sounded just fine, so we got out the maps, and decided that riding all the way home was a great idea! The weather had cleared up quite a lot by now, aiding our decision, but it still wasn't too hot.

So, finding our way out of the Olympic park in the right direction was actually the biggest challenge - then across the M4 and through the back streets down to Cooks River. Along there for many miles before basically joining on where I cycle home from work - through Earlwood then along the M5.

It would have been nice to have been able to shortcut the distance, but there are no good other ways that don't involve riding on lots of roads.

Here's a map of our ride, and if you have Google Earth installed, this link should let you follow the route in more detail.

Total distance: 77.913 km
Homebush to Penshurst: 27.682 km

Getting Faster...

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:58:03 -0500

Today's stats for cycling to work from Penshurst:

Max speed: 48.5 km/h
Average speed: 18.5 km/h
Distance: 21.1 km
Trip Time: 1:08:51

Wow - compare with only three weeks ago!.

It's actually annoying that the average drops so low - quite a lot of time is spent waiting to cross through traffic, or at red lights on side streets. On good riding stretches I actually find myself averaging about 35 km/h.

Cycled from work to band rehearsal at Croydon via the ANZAC Bridge last week which was most enjoyable - once I found the way through - there's lots of passageways for cycles hidden around Sydney.

I spent a little time on the weekend servicing my bike and learning how the gears get adjusted, which has made quite a difference to the ride. Also now have a rack and an old bag adapted as a pannier to carry my clothes, lunch and laptop in.

So yes, we have a new car, but Liz will be doing most of the driving of it, and even she expressed interest in finding a good cycling route to work...

Mowing Update

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:50:24 -0500

It's about time I posted a progress update on Manual Mowing and the Junk Mail Experiment, a post from one year ago.

The mowing went ok for a while, then the thing broke three times, and when we returned from honeymooning I decided to get it fixed good and proper. Back to Bunnings, where they were quite understanding and allowed us to upgrade it to a better model no questions asked.

So, three crappy GMC mowers in our wake, we picked a much better model for not much more money, brought it home and assembled it. The difference was like night and day. I can honestly say that pushing this around is no more effort than using a petrol mower. When you factor in the weight of the petrol mower, this thing glides around the lawn just as easily! Liz even gives it a whirl now and then.

As for the junk mail, it's been pretty good really. Some people distributing the dead trees printed with (mostly) useless crap ignore or fail to see the sign, but by far the biggest offender is The Leader. This already advertising-laden publication comes filled with its own weight in inserts and property guides twice a week.

I'm interested in what is happening in my local community, and The Leader is the old-world way of getting that communication happening. It would just be nicer if they were a little more enviro-friendly.

Electronic Tolling in Sydney

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 13:35:04 -0500

Note: This post has nothing to do with my place of employment.

If you're interested in getting an electronic toll device for your car and don't already have one, it looks like RTA has one of the best on offer, and also they are offering $30 free credit until the end of October.

We've had no great need for one but the added convenience, plus free credit made us decide to opt-in. Now we can take some easy quick trips down the M5 to the Southern Highlands once our new car arrives.

Made it!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 10:02:28 -0500

20.7km in 1:13:55 cycling to work this morning. Quite an improvement on the weekend's trial run.

There's showers at work and I'm sitting feeling quite refreshed at my desk now.

Edit: And home in 1:10, which actually seems to have more uphills in it. It's a bit hard to carry instruments on the bike, plus I don't have proper lights yet so might ride in again Friday.

Not entirely full of hot air

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 22:14:58 -0500

Although I'm forced to admit yesterday was hot, that's not the point of this post. I actually felt like a ride yesterday, and made it all the way into town, circled around my work and then rode straight back again.

I've mapped out the route here on Bikely, where you can follow it through, see notes along the way, etc. This can be dumped onto my ever-useful GPS which I have strapped to the bike, giving me directions on the way in and out.

That doesn't mean I look at them all the time, resulting in quite a few wrong turns as I found my way around!

Once I'm a bit fitter, I'd like to target one hour for the trip, but on my first ever attempt I made 1:45, including getting lost, reading maps, and learning my way through a couple of dodgy intersections. Plus there's that fitness factor.

So, hopefully once a week or so I'll have a great ride - it was thoroughly enjoyable, and interesting to see the different councils' attitudes to cycleways or complete lack thereof.

Let Me Out

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:37:19 -0500

Crazily hot on the (non-airconditioned) train into work today - and it's still winter. At least the government appears willing to let us out in case of terrorism, crashes, etc.
Not sure what ill-advised person decided that we should be locked in a big metal box In Case of Emergency, but surely the ability to run away up an embankment or something is far more important than protecting the Darwin award candidates who want to run along the other tracks, not realising there could be oncoming trains. Besides, with the new timetables there's hardly any other trains and when there are they are running far slower anyway.

I have a weekly ticket at the moment but am organising myself access to lockers, showers and a guide with the plan of cycling in to work, at least on a trial basis, starting next week. I know it will take longer, but the freedom combined with the exercise (which I have long had trouble fitting into my busy schedule) may yet be worth it.

Got my copy of Bike-it yesterday, which is excellent, and coupled with the community-driven Bikely there's plenty of info about good ways to get around.

Sydney FC Membership

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 09:10:29 -0500

Anyone else interested? The packages look pretty reasonable - 10 home games in Silver seating is $188, plus all sorts of extra stuff.

First game is Sunday week.

We went with six other friends to watch the Socceroos beat Kuwait 2-0 on Wednesday night - a great atmosphere but disappointing to see the supposedly "sold-out!!!" stadium actually fairly empty.

Still, a great time was had by all, and it was good to get out and have a yell.

Shame that CityRail decided not to honour our free travel supposedly included in the ticket price - great way to get people not to bother and just drive next time.

Painful Petrol

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:26:51 -0500

From SMH's Radar:

"Did you get any petrol?"

"No, I'm trying to quit."
- Petrol station attendant to customer buying cigarettes, Blue Mountains, August 9 (from Kurt, Faulconbridge).

Interest Rates hit 6%

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:50:49 -0500

Story here.
Remind me again why we didn't buy in England, where rates (used to, at least) wallow around 4%? Not quite sure why Australia has the highest rates in the Western world.

Perhaps our bank will be nice to us again...

In my simplified view of the world, if we stopped either blowing up or being dependent on the middle east for oil supplies, inflation would be lower and our home loan repayments would be lower.

Thinking about a new car shortly, and very high on the list is the oil-miser Prius. Plus, if I lived just a little closer to work and Sydney-siders knew how to deal with cyclists I'd ride to work every day too.

Alternative Music - Taylors!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:57:12 -0500

So if you were planning on going to Soup Plus but now can't, or even if you were going to have a night in, head on over instead to this month's Jersey Kerb gig tomorrow night!
I'll be there, making some noise on a variety of instruments.

Not much jazz though I'm afraid.

Soup Plus Closed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:03:36 -0500

It's a shame that my first blog entry this month (sorry!) has to be one about the jazz club that I first experienced live jazz in is closing:

Unfortunately the Soup was not viable in its current format. Sydney has lost an icon and it will be missed by many.
If you like jazz, blues, funk or swing, then Soup Plus (was) is the place for you.

This was pretty much the only under-age jazz venue in Sydney, and one where (at the old location, at least), many a late night, date or lunch was spent listening to everything from the awesome skills of house-muso John on the piano through to full big bands, and even mates of mine jamming.
I never set foot on their new location, primarily because it was nowhere near where I ever found myself, but also because of various friends who were hard-core fans of the old place giving the new site pretty terrible reviews. They appear to have gone with the RSL/Ikea look, like pretty much every other new venue these days when they don't want to spend any money looking different.
The old place had charm and character, most of which came from the total disregard for fire regulations, mobile phone coverage and ventilation. But that's why it worked.

Sorry Soup, we'll miss you. I can't help thinking if more effort had been spent on the old site then you'd still be swinging.

We're through!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:31:52 -0500

What an absolute shambles of a game! Was at a mate's place this morning with a bunch of other reasonably biased Aussie fans, but what a horrible display of refereeing. Even the usually fairly reserved Les Murray and Craig Foster were amazingly scathing of the officials at the end of SBS's coverage.

At the end we should have cheered but couldn't believe what we were seeing - a Croatian player with three yellow cards still on the pitch, missed fouls everywhere and no replays shown of an extremely dodgy three extra-time minutes.

That off my chest, we're through! Got the bus into town with said mate after the match, got off in George Street only to be faced with a bunch of excited fans yelling "Don't go to work! Don't go to work!" directly at us. It was tempting, but there is work to be done unfortunately. So I'd better go do it :)

A more flexible CityRail is needed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:06:02 -0500

It seems everyone is on CityRail's back these days - and for good reason.
The line I use every day has been the last to get the new "more reliable" timetable, which took affect some time while Liz and I were away overseas. Now we spend a couple of minutes stopped for no apparent reason at on average two separate stations on the way in and out of the city.
This doesn't bother me particularly, as there is no better way for me to get to work and back. One of the reasons we chose Penshurst to move to as the station is only ten minutes' walk from home and my place of employment is about five minutes' walk from Central station. I don't quite understand why people would want to drive into the city every day, dealing with traffic and creating localised pollution everywhere they go. But plenty do, as judged from the full streets and car parks and the prices people are prepared to pay to have somewhere to put their up-to-two-tons of metal for the eight hours it isn't in use.
The trains are better, but I don't kid myself that they run with no environmental impact. The pollution created at coal-fired powerstations is damaging, but at least at some stage in the future more of that could be generated from non-polluting renewable sources.
The news that they are putting up the prices of off-peak fares is pretty challenging though. Train tickets are already stupidly annoying, inflexible and over-priced in Sydney. For example, on Thursday I had to get to Epping for a meeting in the morning, meaning buying my usual weekly to the city, plus a return from Redfern to Epping. After the meeting, back to the city. That evening, a single ticket to go out along the same railway line to Croydon for band rehearsal.
One day, three separate ticket purchases, three pieces of paper, and that's only one mode of transport. Imagine if I had to use busses or ferries!
In London, you buy a ticket for a number of zones, which are roughly a concentric circles around the centre of the city. I could have just ensured that when purchasing my weekly I planned in advance and covered enough zones for the week, and had the freedom to travel for seven days with no further trips to the ticket office. This done, I would have used the train for more journeys that week, and been able to jump on any buses across town too.
The still nowhere-to-be-seen Tcard system claims to make all this possible, but at what price? Most of their money seems to have been spent on a video on their website rather than actually making the thing work.
I have seriously considered cycling to work too, but the distance involved, lack of off-road (or even on-road) cycle lanes, pollution, and the way in which Sydney motorists treat cyclists make it not an attractive proposition when compared with the relative merits of the train. Besides - less trains running now = less pollution! Perhaps that's CityRail's plan.

A house-sitter!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 05:55:05 -0600

Oh, and if you're looking for Daniel Hurd (yep, remember him?) for the next few months while Liz and I are away you'll find him at our house. Thanks very much for helping us out with this one mate, we were a bit worried there for a while after our previous offer fell through, but Alina will now have a minder.
As will the house, and as Hurdo is an ex-groundskeeper he assures us the place will be spick and span upon our return.
Very nice to know!