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What are you looking at? I guess you could say this small, possibly juvenile mantis had a bit of attitude. He or she was munching away on his living lunchbox as I snapped away. Is this my best angle?
Some HTML art blended and modified in Studio Artist. The images were first rendered as HTML tables in Firefox and then converted to 3D in the Tilt DOM inspector. Just so you know.
OK, journalists cop a lot. They have a tough job and are prone to drinking too much. The need more sleep, and they have families and pets, too. Just like real people! So give ‘em a break. But sometimes you wonder. I have personally known of a “journalist” on the SMH (way back in the ’80s, admittedly) who invented a “better” story than the one he received from the persons involved. He interviewed the company’s owners, got the facts and decided to embellish. It was astonishing. But that was just one guy, sure.
And journos can get confused, too. We expect ‘just the facts’ but sometimes we expect some analysis, too. Indeed, what are they there for if they just tell us what someone else wants us to know? If they just re-word what someone said then there’s no value-added – after all we could just go to the source website ourselves and subscribe to a few RSS feeds. But it’s more than that. We complain about bias, too. We don’t want opinion dressed as “fact”. We want all sides represented fairly. And we blame the journos, the headline writers, the editors, the media owners if it smells “wrong”. It’s their fault. Must be.
And all of the above applies (which is to say that I understand and accept the motivations and intents on all sides here). Let me spell it out.
The SMH headline writer (or whoever writes story headlines) condensed a reasonably detailed piece into an understandably brief but distorted, singly-focused one-liner. Distorted? Yes, no-one is quoted in either the article or the report actually saying that there was a “steep rise in injuries”; rather the report states that “rates of life-threatening cases involving drivers of motor vehicles, motor cyclists and pedal cyclists all rose significantly over this period”. Significantly, yes, but steeply? That’s an interpretation, possibly. If we are kind. And why single out “bikers and cyclists”? The report addresses a wide range of transport injuries, after all.
OTOH the intention behind all of this may simply be to get the message out that in absolute terms more people are ending up in hospital after bike accidents, both human and motor-powered. And that, therefore, we may need to take more care. Perhaps we need to do more work here. Maybe. And whilst some effort is made by the journalist to address the obvious – that absolute figures are not the same as relative ones, as in accidents or incidents per 100,000 population or per registration (relevant to motorbikes) or per distance travelled (a hard one to estimate), the overall impression is just that more peope (and older people, especially) are falling off bikes, hitting things (possibly cars) and getting seriously injured. Whilst “anecdotally” there are more bikes out there, which could explain the absolute increase, there’s no real attempt to get inside the story. There’s no analysis. Indeed the article reads almost like a simple re-write of the AIHW website document summary with some quotes added from the institute’s spokesman, Professor James Harrison.
So where’s the value added by the SMH here? They brought it to our attention, yes, and they distorted the truth with that headline. Plus they added some quotes. And they not entirely but largely ignored any stats in the report that contradicted the theme.
So what does the report say? As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Yes, older riders (male and female) figure more prominently now than they did 9 years ago. But overall it depends how you read the report. The “steep rise” is the SMH headline writer’s interpretation, but the reality is that whilst absolute numbers of seriously injured (ie hospitalised) riders (both kinds, motor and human-powered) have noticeably risen over the period, the rate per 100,000 people has increased only gradually, even slowly (NSW pedal-powered accidents went from 2.3 to 3.4 injuries per 100,000 for example over the 9 years). Cyclist injury rates now match the pedestrian rate, which has been falling. And as already noted, that rise in rate per 100,000 “probably” reflects the anecdotal – read “real” – rise in cycle use. And strikingly the rate of increase for pedal cyclists is greatest in the ACT – from 2.8 to 8! Is that a surge in usage in Canberra, or because of their renowned “good” bike-path and road infrastructure? That figure really screams out for extra work. Some analysis would be nice.
The rates per registration are interesting, too, and show a contrasting picture: for motorbikes and riders it’s actually flat – and declining over the last 3 years. For bicycles we have no such rego data, obviously, but assuming we have more bikes in use, maybe the “steep” rise is flatter than we thought.
AIHW 2012. Trends in serious injury due to land transport accidents, Australia 2000-01 to 2008-09. Injury research and statistics series no. 66. Cat. no. INJCAT 142. Canberra: AIHW. Viewed 18 June 2012 .
I’m sitting here looking at the Australian political scene and wondering what exactly is happening, and why. The economy is strong, and growing. Our standard of living is high, we have a working democracy and a relatively even spread of wealth accross the board (with some notable exceptions, of course). We have effective infrastructure and sound governance of key institutions. Yet the media and the federal opposition, perhaps reflecting, maybe driving popular opinion, predominantly tell us of the “gloom” and “doom” and government “incompetence” we face.
Yet if it was really so bad we’d have 10 or 20% unemployment, not 5%. We’d have recession, not growth. We’d have corruption and failing instiutions, crumbling, bankrupted corporations and dysfunctional infrastructure. Yet we don’t. We may be told that’s the case but by any reasonably objective measure, we don’t. Still, the media reports polls that show great distress, hardship and distrust. Again, why? What are these people thinking?
OK, so I have a theory (or 2). Or perhaps a hypothesis or 3, to be more correct.
Hypothesis #1 is that most people just don’t get it. They aren’t fully aware that politics, and parliament, is a game, a debate, an unreality. So when they see and here “what goes on” they think it’s for real, rather than the play-acting it really is. (Although how you could mistake Abbott’s clowning around as “dinkum” is beyond me.)
Hypothesis #2 is that most people don’t really care about politics and the media, they switched off long ago. What they care about is their inner circle of family and friends. If a friend or family member is having a hard time they believe it and extrapolate across the nation. No amount of rational thinking or statistical analysis can turn them back. It just generalises, virally. They then want to punish someone, anyone, for this phantom pain. “The government” is simply a soft, slow moving target.
Hypothesis #3 is that most people just want to have fun. Because of Hypothesis #1 they don’t get that politics and the media are an endless source of entertainment, rather they see it as a painful, ugly spectacle (actually, it is, but let’s not go there). Because of Hypothesis #2 they are feeling pain and want to get even, which creates a dissonance with the desire to have fun. So we end up with a spiralling attitude of “just leave me alone” (to have fun) which is never going to happen because politics and the media are in your face every day. Ugly.
So there you go, 3 views of Australia in 2012: unaware, uninterested and frustrated. Which is why Howard worked, I reckon. He stepped away from any rational debate and made bad decisions (and simple indecision) look boring. Even when it got exciting he made it look boring. Which allowed more people to simply go and have fun. The economy and the infrastructure were no better and the scandals were no less scandalous. But he had no vision beyond boring us to death, happily (OK, maybe the GST was an early, risky exception – that he just barely survived).
Whereas Labor has dared to make brave decisions on new taxation for the miners and carbon pricing and taken action to rebuild infrastructure (such as BER and NBN). They have even switched leaders, midstream! Is this boring? No. They have just been too interesting, damn it.
PCs aren’t just workhorses for the office, they can be a useful and fun tool for home or work image and video production, too. Here’s one such tool that runs in the Windows OS, Dynamic Auto-Painter. I’ve taken a screenshot video as the application does its magical work…
The video as image… well it is, isn’t it? A video – or a film – is just a concatenation of flickering images. So here’s a recent video concoction of mine, visuals and audio by me… it’s a bit abstract, I know. It’s composed of decomposed drawings and other images smashed together in a video editor or 2. Original sound mixed in Mixcraft by me.
In time anything and everything can break or wear out. If you are lucky it’ll be graceful and well-timed; if unlucky it’ll be catastrophic.
Just to illustrate the point herewith a set of images. They date back a few months but if you don’t watch my Flickr stream you may have missed ‘em. Basically I was in a good place, riding almost every day and building up for the road season. Roughly 50km a day but adding on intensity and speed to a good base of 3 months of long steady distance training. I had earlier broken/bent the clamps that hold the saddle rails to the seatpost (an incident involving roadworks, alas) and had fitted the replacements. The bolt was original, a 2-year-old part. That was a mistake.
The bolt snapped whilst I was hammering over some corrugated road, luckily only 2km away from home. I presume it was either faulty or weakened by the earlier incident, or simply over-tightened; or all of the above. As this has happened before (way back in 1987 or so, and a luckless 30km from home) I am careful not to over-torque bolts. So who knows. It broke.
Which brings to mind my list of broken bike bits.
Spokes. One at a time (preferred) or multiple (avoid!). Little or no warning before the “twang” but a spongy feeling in corners could be a sign. Avoid other riders and their pedals, too. Saddle rails. Uncomfortable. Little or no warning, maybe a creak. Saddle clamp. Creaky. Little or no warning. Saddle bolt. Catastrophic. No warning. Seatpost. Catastrophic. A weird, sloppy, flexy feeling just before the corner that I didn’t make it around. Teeth. Mine and also the teeth on the rear cogs. Annoying. Little or no warning, watch for chain slip. Freewheel. As in the ratchet inside the cluster, so you are suddenly in permanent freewheel. Can be awkward. Little or no warning, listen for new noises. Chain. Sticky, skippy, bent, broken. Visual inspection helps, also listen out for skipping, slipping sounds. Steerer. As in the expander bolt that snapped. Not easy to steer without steering. No warning. Don’t over-tighten. Not a problem with current headsets and steerers but the steerer itself may snap. Cables. A brake cable and a rear derailleur cable. Awkward. Visual checks will help, remember to look in the hidden areas. And a sloppy cable isn’t always fixed by tightening. Tyres. Exploded, punctured, delaminated, cut, sliced. You-name-it. Visual checks help but sometimes it just happens.
Although I’ve never done it (touch wood) handlebars may also snap, usually where they clamp. It doesn’t look pretty.
I’m sure there’s more but that’ll do for now.
This is what happens when I spend some time with my old Sydney street directories, a camera and a video editor… this is the full version, there are shorter ones on my youtube channel.
Does being Australian mean that you (barely) adapt an (apparently) US ‘anti-tax poem‘ to suit local Aussie taxes? If you are one of the people deliberately and provocatively spreading this suite of lies – see below – then apparently, yes. And does being Australian mean to be deceptive and untruthful? Again, apparently yes. Sad, I think.
The list itself presents as ‘fact’ all of the Aussie taxes – but most of them are fees or charges rather than true taxes. Now you could argue that this is just as bad as a tax, except fees and charges are generally ‘user-pays’ in nature and generally aimed at cost recovery. And in any case this purports to be a list of taxes, so it really should be honest and count only taxes, not a whole slew of fees. And in many cases there are outright made-up “taxes” thrown in, so it’s a lazy and deceptive list.
I shouldn’t spread it further – but if just a few people read this and actually think about the lies within – then maybe it’s a worthwhile risk.
And it’s downhill after that. It reads a little like George Harrison’s bitter (but likeable) ‘Taxman’ diatribe, actually, so it’s not new in any way, shape or form. The list below of so-called Australian ‘taxes’ includes my comment following each ‘tax’; red text denotes a clear lie or at best a fee or charge rather than a tax. Accounts Receivable Tax - I doubt this exists – we generally pay tax on services and net income, not the book value of our A/R Airline surcharge tax – a tax on airline surcharges? What? Airlines apply charges and ‘surcharges’, these are not taxes. Perhaps the writer means GST paid on airline charges? Airline Fuel Tax - yes, generally there are taxes (actually called ‘excise‘, generally) levied against most fuels but this is not confined to airlines. And airlines (like most transport operations) profit from public infrastructure anyway Airport Maintenance Tax – again, this looks made up. Most major airports have been privatised – they charge landing fees and so on but do not “tax” us. This is user-pays, anyway. Building Permit Tax - well is this a charge or a tax? Building permits in Australia are largely user-pays fees that partially recover the cost of ensuring building meet certain reasonable conditions Cigarette Tax - and since when has this been levied on non-smokers as well? I think this one is obvious enough, and it’s generally considered an ‘excise‘ rather than a tax Corporate Income Tax - shouldn’t corporations pay tax, too? In any case it doesn’t exist – it’s called ‘company tax’ in Australia! Goods and Services Tax (GST) – this actually exists! Hooray! Death Tax - a what? It’s made up, again. Doesn’t anyone check this stuff? Australia abolished ‘death duties’ in 1979, although some assets may fall under capital gains tax Dog License Tax - oh please! You are having a laugh! If you choose to own a dog then some (if not all) local government areas require you to register the animal – for obvious enough reasons Driving Permit Tax - again, made up. No such thing. It’s an individual choice, isn’t it? You drive, you pay a fee for a licence. Are we proposing that drivers shouldn’t attain a minimum standard? Environmental Tax (Fee) – so is it a tax or a fee? It’s made up. Yes, there are environmental fees or levies generally paid to local councils to partly cover waste disposal costs, and if you get fined for polluting… so be it. Excise Taxes – well yes and no. Excise taxes have already been listed above, so this is a repeat. Perhaps all of the excises should be gathered under this one category? It exists, anyway Federal Income Tax – well yes, but here in Australia we just call it ‘personal income tax‘ Fishing License Tax – a what? Yes, there are fees and charges and regulations to protect fish stocks but again it’s not a tax, it’s a fee or a charge. User pays. Petrol Tax (too much per litre) – well it exists as an excise (again) but how much is too much? Australia has cheap fuel by world standards and all transport leverages public infrastructure – how about some user-pays action here, too? (BTW if you plot petrol price at the pump against inflation we are still actually paying what we paid in 1976 – I know because I’ve done just that.) Petrol is cheap, if you have decided to use more of it you should pay accordingly, surely? Health Tax - a what? This one is made up. It’s a lie. It may be called something else, the Medicare levy perhaps, but essentially it’s just a nonsense. Health costs are either fees and charges or funded out of general revenue Hunting License Tax - oh yes, I paid that just yesterday. Ha! Maybe it’s a charge for hunting – but it’s not a tax on us all, is it? Interest Tax - a what? Generally tax is withheld from interest, dividends and royalties and accounted for under income tax. Get real, this is another joke tax. Made up. Liquor Tax - is this a real tax? Maybe just put it under excise and duties. Don’t drink alcohol and you won’t pay this “tax”. Luxury Taxes - No, we don’t tax ‘luxury’, per se. It’s essentially made up. Some luxury goods attract extra tax, for example high-end cars. Big deal. It’s a choice. Marriage License Tax – another fee disguised as a ‘tax’. Do you want to register your marriage? Pay the fee. Medicare Tax – mentioned already under ‘health’ so it’s a duplicate. Technically it’s a levy, not a tax. You can minimise it by investing in private health cover. You’d prefer to take your chances and pay full dollar for your next heart bypass instead? Mortgage Tax – well it gets a bit confused here as there are fees to register mortgages and such large transactions often attract other charges (or ‘stamp duties’). It exists in a sense, but it’s a choice and generally the user pays: it’s not an overarching ‘tax’. Personal Income Tax – yes! It definitely exists! Property Tax – a bit murky again but there are property or land rates or ‘taxes’, stamp duties on land sales and so on. This generally is user-pays (but ultimately we all pay) and funds local government. It’s cost recovery for all local government services. Is this really a problem? Poverty Tax - a what? It’s made up. It may be a good idea that the wealthy pay a tax that helps the poor but generally it doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. So why circulate lies? Prescription Drug Tax – pardon? Is this for real? Usually we work the other way around in Australia – the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme subsidises many prescribed drugs. Another lie. Real Estate Tax – another possible confusion or conflation, I guess. Yes, there are taxes on real estate, but haven’t we already covered that, above? Look at Property tax. Don’t double count! Vehicle Tax - yes and no. There are fees and charges that apply to owning and using vehicles but no overarching ‘vehicle tax’. It’s user-pays and cost recovery, anyway. Do you want a free ride in life, or are you prepared to pay for what you use? Public infrastructure is owned by all of us, if you only use your share, fine. If you use more than that then you should pay more. Simple. Retail Sales Tax – largely replaced by the GST in Australia so I’ll call it out as a duplicate. Let’s move on. Service Charge Tax - a what? Please explain. Let’s call this made up. At best a ‘service charge’ is a fee for a service, ie it’s user-pays. It’s not a tax. School Tax - a what? Public schools are funded largely out of general revenue, we do not pay a “School Tax”. If there are individual charges or fees, that’s different – and again it’s user-pays. Vehicle License Registration Tax - no, no, no. It’s a charge or a fee! It’s not a tax! And a choice. Like the driving licence example above it applies some degree of standard to motor vehicles, ensuring a measure of public safety. It’s not a tax, it’s user-pays; but it doesn’t even recover costs. Vehicle Sales Tax - OK, I think we can lump this under ‘duplicate’ as it’s already covered by the vehicle, GST and ‘luxury tax’, above Water Tax – a bit ambiguous, this one. Do we tax water, or do we charge for storing, purifying and distributing it? Isn’t it user-pays? There is no ‘water tax’, as such, but various instances in whicj water is valued and fees applied Watercraft Registration Tax - again, user-pays. It’s a fee for registration, not a tax. Well Permit Tax - again, user-pays. It’s a fee for a bore, not a tax. It’s not something that affects all of us, anyway Workers Compensation Tax - this is rubbish, a lie. When did you last pay Workers Comp tax? Yes, you are compelled to provide a safe workplace and maintain appropriate insurance. Is that a tax? No. Is it a bad thing? No.
I count 25 lies – items which are clearly not taxes. They are either made up or are simply fees or charges for services. I have allowed slack for excises and duties and even for duplicates, of which there are several. So the list is poorly researched at best.
I guess the point to the list and the reason why many people “like” it is that no-one really likes tax. But if we didn’t have it we’d only have the services that are economically sustainable, ie entrenched, massive inequality. That’s a recipe for revolution and one of the big reasons we have social democratic government instead of anarchy, tyrany or imperialism. No good moving to another country, either: they all tax; and we aren’t overtaxed here, in fact we are at the lower end of the global scale by ‘developed’ standards. Look it up. We do have problems getting rid of the annoying overlapping state and federal taxes, fees and charges though, mostly because we rarely get cooperation between the states and the federal government. And yes, big miners and other corporates find the loopholes and win ‘concessions’ better than most of us. (So buy their shares and prosper, I guess.)
The list is being spread of course by people who are against the carbon tax or the mining super profits (or ‘rent’) tax, or both. So they have a vested interest – or an axe to grind. (Which doesn’t mean they have a licence to lie, though.) Let’s not forget that only about 2% of us work for mining companies, and mining’s share of our GDP is relatively small and very cyclical – although mining does currently generate much of the export wealth that drives up our dollar (simultaneously ‘killing’ manufacturing). So arguably we need a mining tax and a carbon tax just to slow mining down a bit, giving manufacturing some breathing room. And us a chance to get off the petrol and coal habit.
So if being Aussie means to both lie and to destroy the balance of our economy then the ‘tax poem’ is a very Aussie thing to spread.
If you think differently then maybe spend some time pondering the ethics of sending your friends a list of lies and half-truths.
Having previously broken the clamps it was inevitable that the bolt would be next. It went ‘crack’ over some bumps at about 40kmh. Clearly something has broken, I thought.
The saddle fell off as I battled to keep straight and slowly brake around a curving road through the Davo swamp. The bolt and the clamps landed and bounced on the road as I continued onward another 20-30m so so. They were a bit hard to find but I got the important bits.
Luckily the saddle was tied by its rails to the post with a tyre-sock or I would have been searching the roadside for it, too. I sat it on the post for the slow, mostly-out-of-the-saddle trip home. (Once before I had done this on a Gitane and rode over 30km back home, out of the saddle.)
Yep, it’s a broken Felt F75 2009 model single-bolt seat post clamp. Ouch.
And yes, it was a Central Coast pot hole – or sub-optimally completed “road works” if you like. Blew 2 tyres (noticed that!) but didn’t notice the fractured clamp for another 3 weeks or so.
Well I noticed that the saddle felt a bit “wonky” but couldn’t quite pin down why… until finally the gap widened sufficiently that it wobbled up and down enough to be annoying…. I stopped, inspected and went, “oh, there’s the problem, right there!”. D’oh, as they say. And other cliches.
You may recall that over the years I have also broken a post (completely, I mean, as in sheared off) and snapped off the bolt that holds the saddle to the post. None of this is recommended practice.
Yep, it’s a broken Felt F75 2009 model single-bolt seat post clamp. Ouch.
And yes, it was a Central Coast pot hole – or sub-optimally completed “road works” if you like. Blew 2 tyres (noticed that!) but didn’t notice the fractured clamp for another 3 weeks or so.
Well I noticed that the saddle felt a bit “wonky” but couldn’t quite pin down why… until finally the gap widened sufficiently that it wobbled up and down enough to be annoying…. I stopped, inspected and went, “oh, there’s the problem, right there!”. D’oh, as they say. And other cliches.
You may recall that over the years I have also broken a post (completely, I mean, as in sheared off) and snapped off the bolt that holds the saddle to the post. None of this is recommended practice.
A $10K bike will absolutely fly, even with me riding it. And it will look great. And it will start conversations and draw admiring glances. Well so you hope, I guess. But the law of diminishing returns applies to bike hardware, big time. That last extra $1K you spend gets you maybe 0.5% more performance. And the preceding additional $5K got you 2%. If that.
Well 2% extra oomph is still worth having, isn’t it? You’ll win with that, surely? Well, it depends. A $4K bike – or even a $2K one – will be almost as well built and reliable as a $10K one. Sure there will be differences, a top-name brand may indeed be better put together and will most likely weigh less and slip through the air easier, but the differences aren’t as major as the marketers and magazine reviewers would like you to think.
A human bieing pedalling a chain driven bike is very efficient anyway and there is little to be gained from the transmission alone. And a triangular frame of any material is stiff by design, so any stiffness (and concomitant power transmission) gains are tiny. And if you think that crank stiffness really matters then you are doing too much time in the gym or are a track sprinter, or both.
You may get some aerodynamic gains – but these don’t really matter below 30km/h and only pay off significantly over 40km/h. But even these gains don’t really matter unless you are in a solo break, time-trialling or fronting the bunch over long distances. If you are drafting then the savings are non-existent to vanishingly small. But if you are a solo-break kinda rider, especially one with a big personal frontal area, then it may matter; if only to give you more confidence and motivation to stay out there and fry.
You will get some comfort gains, perhaps, or improvements in feel, and maybe – just maybe – better handling from a more expensive bike. But all bike designers know how to make a bike handle, it’s not really a black art. And handling will vary with your personal setup and skill in shifting your weight around on the move. So a cheaper bike will likely as not perform much the same as a top-spec one. You may notice a difference when you swap from bike to bike but whether it helps you in a race is debatable. It may all be in the mind.
Mind you, I can’t talk: I spent $5K on a Look carbon bike in 1990. That was a lot back then and I thought it would revitalise my racing and training. It was a motivational aid, if you will, and it worked for a while. Until it just became another bike. And then I swapped the groupset to my favourite steel-framed ctit bike and hung the carbon frame up for a while. Mind you, unlike most of my other bikes – and especially the steel ones (all rusted out or sold on) – it’s still in my hands and rideable. And it remains light and fast. So it wasn’t a bad investment, really.
But did I need to spend top dollar? No. My winningest bike was my first “race” bike, or first bike I raced anyway. It was steel and made in Japan. It was a Shogun. It had mid-spec Shimano components. It was around $700 new in the early ’80s. It worked. It won. And as I went up the grades I ugraded from clinchers to tubulars (glue-ons or singles). It went faster still – and still won. But it really wasn’t the bike, it was me.
I was motivated, racing was new and fresh to me and I liked winning. So I trained hard and raced even harder. Although I “upgraded” the bike many times (to Gitane, Colnago, Look and a semi-custom steel frame) and went as far as I could go in the local crit grades I never really did any better than I did on that relatively heavy, low-end Shogun.
And to be honest the biggest improvement I ever made to a bike was swapping from clinchers to tubulars. If you really want to go faster, invest in better wheels.
Now if spending big on a bike motivates you to train and race then so be it. Spend the money. You may not get the performance enhancement you expected but you may get a nicer bike that will last longer. And – most importantly – keep you cycling.
Make your sign large enough to be seen from Google Maps (or whatever) and get free advertising. Don’t know if it works in drawing customers but I saw it and here it is… in the Albert St, St Peters landfill site… formerly a brickpit and/or swamp I would suggest.
Once, long ago, this is what racing cyclists wore on their heads to ward off evil spirits (if they didn’t wear a cap and a cabbage leaf as well, anyway). Now they wear plastic and polystyrene foam. Which is weirder?
They were light and cool. They fastened with a simple strap and buckle. They did little to protect the head from anything other than minor object impact. But it’s what we had, at least until the “esky” was invented, circa 1980.
The esky was a bulky, hot and heavy alternative that provided much better impact protection but suffered from being, umm, hot and heavy. It was avoided as much as possible – even scorned – at least until the design improved and it evolved into the lightweight, cooler and more effective helmets we wear today.
A slightly more bizarre take on an Ansett (or short to be ex-Ansett) Short flying boat at Sydney’s Rose Bay around 36-odd years ago… give or take. Many of these images originally by the late James Davidson (I’m not sure which, it was a while ago now…!). Rose Bay was a magical place in the 1970s, a tiny living museum of international air travel.
The problem with riding and winning consistently in the US is that you get typecast as a “US-based” rider; especially so when you win crit after crit. Everyone knows you are good – but who wants a ‘crit specialist’ in a WorldTour team? Well Bjarne Riis is taking a punt on one such prolific Aussie rider and I suspect he’ll prove a valuable signing for 2012.
“Jonathan has won many races in the past four years whilst riding in Australia and the States and has shown he is a winner,” said team owner Bjarne Riis. “I feel he now deserves a shot at the very top level. He is a hard working person and a tough guy, and I believe he can further lift his level. So I see Jonathan as an asset for us in the stage races, when it comes to helping out J.J. Haedo in the sprints, or going for a win himself.”
I can’t tell what this is anymore so I pronounce it abstract. It was once a photograph of something, I think, but I have Photoshopped that original work out of existence. There are other image manipulation tools at work here too.
Of course mobile IP is going to grow – we’ve reached a reported 5.3% after what, maybe 5 years of easily-accessible mobile IP traffic? And it’s only in the last 2 years that it’s really started to take off. It’s early days and it’s easy to expect that the mobile world will arrive soon enough, at least to some significant degree. What this survey – which matches my own server data traffic almost exactly – reveals is that the vast majority of IP traffic remains between fixed points, if you count laptops as “fixed”, which is a relative thing these days. In essence it’s PC traffic, at home or in a place of business. It’s servers and laptops, desktops and routers and you-name-it-devices sitting pretty well still for most of the day. And maybe, just maybe, going for a ride home after 5PM. So for those who believe we are already “going mobile”, think again.
Why do we assume that we have already taken the plunge into a truly mobile world? Mostly it’s smartphone and tablet sales – or at least the hype. These are genuinely hot products and I’m not doubting that the market has shifted more than a little. Tablets are a semi-mobile device that may move around the house a bit and even replace a few laptops, but they aren’t yet as mobile – or as numerous – as a smartphone. And smartphones are all the rage. But whilst smartphones are replacing dumb phones that doesn’t mean that everyone is downloading huge volumes of data, or that they are likely to do so in the future. And this is where the argument really lies. Do we need a super-fast optical fibre NBN to the home when smartphones are simultaneously driving more mobile connections but at a lower volume of data per transaction? Will the growth in data traffic actually reverse?
If smartphones and similar devices actually grow to dominate the market then the NBN will be under-utilised in many areas and possibly prove to be a lame duck overall. But on the evidence so far whilst smartphones et al are selling like hot cakes they aren’t driving IP traffic by nature or in growth. And traffic overall is indeed growing. If you are generating large files at work or downloading big applications or high-definition content then you aren’t generally using a smartphone to do it. You are downloading low-res content or small apps instead. And when you want to crunch or share a big spreadsheet or write up your preso or important document you are using a pretty traditional hard keyboard and relatively fixed PC. You may be moving around the office or home a lot more when you do it but you aren’t necessarily on the beach or in a bus when you do it either. So in today’s world we need the NBN or at least a volume data solution. But tomorrow?
And here’s the rub. Truly mobile traffic will grow and more “stuff” will be done on the move. But more people will also work from home or from other unconventional workplaces and our expectations for ever-faster data transfer will also increase. Can mobiles alone handle it? Probably not, although new mobile devices coupled with cloud computing will undoubtedly replace many, many fixed PCs. A smart, mobile device that plugs into a hard keyboard and the cloud could well kill the PC as we know it. But in so doing it also becomes just a little “fixed” too. So why suck data via RF when there’s optical fibre on hand? We know also that faster, better mobile connections will come along – but also that RF still, theoretically at least, can’t shift data like optical fibre can. So we will need both to play to their strengths. And if the NBN helps make it easier to flexibly, transparently connect whatever device you use into a fast IP network, so much the better.
The next 5 years will reveal far more about where the pieces fit. In the meantime don’t get carried away with our overly-hyped “mobile love”.
Some 5.3 percent of all Internet traffic by Australian users is now coming from non-PC devices such as mobile phones, tablets, e-readers or games consoles, according to Paul Budde’s Budde.com. quoting a survey by US-based comScore.
I think we’ve worked this out by now, but a sober, fair assessment of the carbon tax would reveal O’Farrell, Abbott and the various vested interests banding together these days to be shonky charlatans peddling mistruths. And so it goes.
At least the SMH is running a more academic line of reasoning lately:
Oh I think I can do maybe 1 or even 2% of what this guy can do on a bike. And I’m not going out there now to try some of this out.
It’s a nice bit of editing in its own right. Called “Industrial Revolutions”, starring street trials rider Danny Macaskill. He’s freaky, in a good way. It’s been filmed in a deserted Ayrshire industrial area, including a train yard and some derelict buildings. Directed by Stu Thomson. Wow.
A couple of weeks after Cadel Evans has won Le Tour 2011 and I can confidently assert, not for the first time, that cycling is simply, definitelynot a team sport. Sure, we dress it up like it is, and we cobble together a passing representation of a team sport at times – look at the team time trial for example – but when it really matters, when the winners stand on the podium, it’s clearly, obviously, all about the individual: Cadel won. We glorify the man, who politely thanks his team. But his team, BMC, didn’t even get the team prize at Le Tour. Instead they got one man standing atop a podium and a shared prize pool.
This individualism is what appealed to me in the first place. You don’t need a team to ride, or to train, or to race. You don’t even need a specific time or even an agreed place – you just need you, a bike, some time to spare and some terrain to ride on. After all, it’s far more like walking or running than like football or netball, isn’t it? Sure, we wrap it all up in an organisation, ’cause people need to organsie things and make it all tidy and legit, but at its essence it’s just you and a bike. You call the shots, you hurt, you suffer, you win. Or get dropped. Or whatever.
OK, the teams aspect is real enough at times, true. Cadel didn’t win on his own, although at times it looked that way. He had a team behind him who protected him and kept him out of trouble. But when he had to ride, he rode alone against the other talented loners. All of these guys are used to riding long miles on their own. Sure it’s great to ride with others, be they teammates or just a loose arrangement of riders you stumble upon. It’s fun. It’s natural to form a bunch and ride together. But it’s neither essential nor the point. Just as surely as it’s not about the bike, it’s also not about the team, your teammates or your club. Or even your coach. It’s about you. And deep down we all know that.
It could have gone either way – but I think this huntsman lost.
The wasp was tenacious – it caught and stunned the huntsman before dragging it along a weatherboard wall for about 10 metres, inching ever higher. It fell a few times to the ground before finally getting ‘upstairs’ as it were to its nest in the eaves. Well yes, of course I watched it. I offered to help!
Why has this pic of Sydney’s Camperdown Velodrome suddenly taken lots of hits on Flickr? Don’t know.
This is the Sydney 1000 final in 1982. It was a warm day during a dry spell. The riders, officials and spectators are all (obviously!) much older now – and the velodrome is gone.
The advertising is interesting. Last time I Iooked Cyclesport was still a shop at Thornleigh – but I’m not so sure that Bennett Bicycles is still with us. Fortunately we do still have Tempe and Bass Hill velodromes to play on, and the rest… but a lot of memories went with this track.
I suppose I should mention that Camperdown velodrome replaced my local velodrome at Henson Park in the late 60s/early 70s. It was a massive, shallow saucer around the then Newtown RLFC home ground. Luckily I rode my (road) bike on it before the council ripped up the old track to put in better floodlighting. (Not that it did any good for Newtown, which was relegated anyway). Dulwich Hill bike club got the more compact Camperdown in exchange, at least until about 10 years ago when it was closed down, cleansed and remediated as parkland (apparently the previous use as a tip had left an excess of toxins).
Last one on Kenso, and it’s the racecourse that became a university – of NSW, to be precise. Kensington racetrack was a pony course adjacent – probably too close – to the Randwick horse racing track. Randwick won out politically and the Kensington ponies were shifted south to Ascot (or Mascot, if you like). The Old Tote building became a theatre under NIDA and the rest of the land became the UNSW.
There are also some interesting tram formations on this 1926 map, including the Dacey Ave line and the loop on the other side of Anzac Parade from the racetracks.
Lots of changes here since 1926. Long Bay Road becomes today’s Malabar Road and the trams have gone, of course. What is now Heffron Park is not yet split by Fitzgerald Ave and plenty of houses are missing. Also the old Randwick rifle range has yet to shrink or lose its tram link (along Araluen Street, below).
Nice advert for a dream home in Randwick… wonder if that house still exists?
Also noted is the tram line up Perry Street, right onto Bunnerong Road, keeping well to the left before crossing the road onto the right side and finally enjoying some reserved track. I guess the road traffic was fairly light in any case but it seems odd to cross sides like that….
Note ‘King Street’ for today’s Princes Highway, the dam at the Cooks River and the cricket ground on King St near Station Street. Also the advert for lime from kilns on Canal Rd is interesting.
It’s only an opinion overlaid with appropriate images, and in some ways the “facts” are arranged and exaggerated for impact, but as someone who has been watching the science unfold over the last 35-odd years I can only agree that it’s both a compelling argument and more reality-based than most denialist diatribes. If you disbelieve that anthropogenic carbon pollution is impacting the Earth’s climate then it won’t sway you, unfortunately. But if we continue to wait and delay acting to change our habits then we do so at great risk. I don’t like the odds myself. I’d rather act.
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