Chuq and Emma's Blog

The year that was ... 2011

2011-12-31T23:11:00.004+11:00

It's that time of the year again - I've posted so few blog updates this year that it would be entirely reasonable for even dedicated readers to not know what has happened in our lives in 2011!

The biggest change of course happened on 24 August - when our beautiful daughter Isla Abigail was born. What a change to the household... we are now outnumbered in our own house by our own children, and I am outnumbered by the females in the house! As much as we (or parents in general) like to complain about the challenges of parenthood, or their bad behaviour, or the lack of sleep... we are very lucky to have three happy, healthy, children who all make us smile every day.

I would like to say it has been a relatively easy transition - but honestly, I think most of the credit goes to Emma - having to look after three of them, by herself, three days a week - I don't know how she does it!

It seems to have been the year for babies - welcome to Eloise, Eleanor, Sofia, Lucie, Addison, Monte, Magnus, Charlotte, Max, Samuel, Oliver, Eli, Charlie, Sophie, Olivia, Quinn .. and I know I am going to forget at least one baby - but there have been so many!

The other big event this year was the start of construction of our new house in June. I won't go into detail as I have done that in other blog posts - but as of the end of the year, the frame for the upper floor is almost completed. We should be at lock up stage (cladding, windows and roof) by the end of January, all going well. The contracted end date is in May 2012. When I say end date - there will be some rooms incomplete as we wait on the sale of our current house. We can live with that - for those who remember when we moved into our current house - no flooring, no insulation, no fences, no decks, no concrete paths/driveway, no retaining walls - this won't be a problem for us to deal with!

Emma's business, Wrap 'Em, is going very well - she now has five major suppliers in Europe, and it seems a new shipment arrives at least once a week on average. The most recent one came about when they contacted Emma and asked if she would be the Australian reseller - which was a great vote of confidence!

Emma is also very busy education wise - as well as continuing her training for her Certificate IV in Breastfeeding Education via the Australian Breastfeeding Association - she is also enrolled in a Diploma of Music Performance at the University of Tasmania's Conservatorium of Music - fully funded thanks to an arrangement with the Hobart City Band!

Speaking of band - we travelled to Adelaide at Easter where Emma performed with HCB's wind symphony and brass band at the Australian National Band Championships. Among other things, we learned that there is a fully fenced modern playground just north of the city, which kept the kids busy, and Charles sane. We also managed to sneak in a quick trip to Adelaide Zoo (that was Georgia's fourth zoo in as many states!), as well as watching the ANZAC Day march on Easter Monday.

Apart from that, Emma and Hamish had a few days in Melbourne in June - a trip that was lengthened slightly by the Chilean ash cloud! Charles also had a weekend in Sydney in July to take part in Wikimedia Australia's strategic planning workshop. Charles was re-elected to the WM AU committee for another year in September.

Charles also joined the board of the Tasmania United Taskforce in November. For those who don't know, Charles has been an active campaigner for Tasmania having a team in the A-League, and this makes it official - looking after the website and social media channels of the Tassie bid!

Work wise, Charles is still in the Corporate IT department at Transend Networks - although changing focus for the first few months of 2012 to work as an Infrastructure Administrator, assisting with looking after the server and SAN infrastructure (translation for the non-geeks - the bigger, more expensive boxes with flashier lights). Certainly a welcome change of focus!

2012 will certainly be a year of big change for us - as well as moving, Georgia will be starting school (three days a week in kindergarten) - yes, already!

Once again, I will get in early for next year - have a Merry Christmas 2012 and a Happy New Year for 2013!

The first three months - digging!

2011-11-30T23:48:00.000+11:00

I just realised my last update ended with the words "hopefully future updates will be more often than every three weeks" - how embarrassing!

A picture tells a thousand words ... these photos show the progress until the end of September. The most disastrous thing was being delayed an extra week due to some of the dirt wall collapsing.

(Note the curved wall - it isn't curved, it's just a side effect of the panorama software!)

Also here is a close-up of the rear of the house - this has confused a few people!

It's easiest to think of it in three sections:

- The left of the picture, with the extra height retaining wall, shows where the house will end

- The middle of the picture shows where the back deck will be - it will cover the two enclosed areas below. Of these areas, the back section houses the water tank (and will also house the hot water cylinder and the external part of the heat pump) and is accessible from the rumpus/storage room on the ground floor as seen in the previous pics. The section nearest the camera iis void/inaccessible. The roofline of the house will cover the deck.

- The right of the picture shows the two terraced grass play areas which will be accessible from the deck via a couple of steps. No, these aren't rooms - just big concrete boxes full of dirt!

House update: Excavation (weeks 1-3)

2011-07-22T23:09:00.000+10:00

I've been meaning to do this every night for the past three weeks... well, here it is!

This is the view from the front-right (south east) of the house - the last one was taken on July 21!

A lot of bluestone boulders but nothing that couldn't be dealt with, fortunately!

Panoramic view from the eastern side:

Again the last picture here was July 21. Notice the house seems to take up the whole block? Well, not really - the flat section in the last picture (just right of middle, below the house with the red roof) is where the water tank will be - under the rear deck - so the house will end just to the left of this. The excavation work to the right is all related to the deck and levelling of the backyard.

All the timber which you see is only temporary - to support the construction of the giant wall. The wall will run alongside the edge of the driveway, along the edge of the ground floor of the house. At the back it will surround the water tank (enclosing it, almost - there will be a small entryway) and then run partially into the backyard - enabling us to terrace it into multiple flat sections.

This is our driveway - with 7 1/2 month pregnant Emma - and the view!

That's it for now - hopefully future updates will be more frequent that every 3 weeks!

The Mercury: Fair and balanced

2011-07-08T22:42:00.000+10:00

... and now, the top soccer stories in Tassie newspapers today:

The Examiner - "Launceston may host Harry Kewell".
The Mercury - "FFT investigates brawl".

Just another example of how biased The Mercury is.

Still not convinced?

Of the thirteen top stories in the Mercury soccer section, six are about the "racial abuse" issue (the rest are local club news and match results). However, in that time period (19 June - 8 July), The Mercury has also published articles about soccer workshops during World Refugee Day ("Kicking off a new life", 26 June) and an update on the Tassie A-League bid ("Tassie A-team in the pipeline", 30 June). Why aren't these articles included? Too positive? Don't they suit The Mercury's point of view?

This isn't unique to the Tasmanian media - it happens all across the country, sometimes it is subtle, often it is patently obvious. In any case, nothing is going to change if we stay silent!

An open letter to Marti Zucco

2011-06-28T23:57:00.003+10:00

So not only do we have Hawthorn and North Melbourne playing matches in Tassie - the latter due to a fair bit of effort from Hobart City Council Alderman Marti Zucco - but it seems now he is trying to get Melbourne Storm to play in Hobart.

This seems strange to me - an NRL team, instead of an A-League team, for a few reasons - first, Tasmania is certainly not known as a rugby league stronghold - it would be the #3 or #4 football code in Tassie. Second, because Marti Zucco is Italian - and although generalisations about a person due to their heritage are not always correct, he is very proud of his roots.

Dear Mr Zucco,

I'm writing to you since you have been in the media recently, due to your actions in trying to attract national club sporting events to the state - not only the AFL games at Bellerive Oval, but also about the announcement last week of a possible NRL pre-season game at North Hobart Oval.

As you may know there has been an A-League pre-season match (featuring Melbourne Victory) each July for the past five years at Aurora Stadium in Launceston, generally drawing 5000-8000 spectators.

It would be fantastic to see a similar event in Hobart. For the coming A-League season (October 2011-March 2012), Football Federation Australia has marked five matches to be played at a "regional venue - TBC". I've contacted both Cricket Tasmania and Launceston City Council about the possibility of hosting one of these but have not received a response. Going by the enthusiasm you have shown in drawing AFL and NRL matches to Hobart, I hope you would have a similar interest in negotiating an A-League match.

It would be great to get to the stage where there are regular matches in Tasmania by Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Victory, Melbourne Heart or even the Melbourne Rebels super rugby team. Such events could hopefully be the precursor to the development or upgrade of a rectangular stadium - such as North Hobart Oval - in the state.

For reference the available match dates are:

Wed 7 Dec 2011 - Sydney FC v Perth Glory
Sun 11 Dec 2011 - Gold Coast United v Sydney FC
Wed 14 Dec 2011 - Wellington Phoenix v Brisbane Roar
Wed 18 Jan 2012 - Melbourne Heart v Central Coast Mariners
Wed 25 Jan 2012 - Adelaide United v Newcastle Jets

Full fixture list: http://www.a-league.com.au/site/_content/document/00002236-source.pdf

CC:
Cricket Tasmania (events@crickettas.com.au)
Aurora Stadium (aurorastadium@launceston.tas.gov.au)
Football Federation Australia (feedback@footballaustralia.com.au)
John Boulous, (CEO Football Federation Tasmania) (CEO@footballfedtas.com.au)
Michelle O'Byrne (Minister for Sport) (michelle.obyrne@parliament.tas.gov.au)
Mark Shelton (Shadow Minister for Sport & Rec) (mark.shelton@parliament.tas.gov.au)

Never attribute to malice...

2011-05-24T13:03:00.002+10:00

".. that which is adequately explained by stupidity". - Robert J. Hanlon.

If you get your information about the National Broadband Network from the mainstream media, you couldn't really be blamed for thinking that the sky is falling in. A lot existing media companies, including television and newspapers, have had their industry turned on its head by the internet, and as high speed communications becomes ubiquitous this is only going to get worse for them. They are struggling, just like the music industry did in the 1990s and 2000s.

However that isn't what this blog post is about! Sometimes you find someone who is well intentioned, but just doesn't do their research! This article from the 22 May 2011 edition of the Launceston Examiner is a perfect example.

Tasmania faces long NBN wait

BY MATT MALONEY

22 May, 2011

To start with, the premise of the article flawed...

LAUNCESTON could have to wait until 2021 to be connected to the National Broadband Network.
[...]
... the company has not identified towns and cities to be connected to the network beyond last week's announcement on the project's first and second stages.

This is easily refuted by this press release from Stephen Conroy's office which was published over a year ago.

Also note the end date of 2021 - this appears to have been calculated by adding the ten year build time onto this year - ignoring the fact that construction started about a year and a half ago.

There are also comments such as:

"Tasmanian NBN users have told The Sunday Examiner that communication with internet users with a lower digital bandwidth was much slower than the one-gigabyte-a-second promised."

Gold. Confused by two different things in one sentence! The maximum connection speed of an NBN connection at present is 100 megabits per second, not 1000 - which, although it is within the network capabilities, it is not available to residential customers as yet. He then fails on the difference between megabits per second and megabytes per second. Easily confusing to the lay person, but someone educating the public should be better informed. For those playing at home, a 100 megabit per second connection should result in a throughput of around 12 megabytes a second.

One Smithton business owner, Brett Dawes, said from his six months' experience, internet users must be on the same bandwidth for the network to work properly.

"There is not much point having a patch connected here and a patch connected there - it's all or nothing," he said.

Poorly worded, but I see the point he is trying to make... however, it ignores the fact that people in one house could be using the single FTTH connection to use several different services! You could have someone watching ABC iView on their laptop, someone else streaming a movie in the lounge room, a third person one a video chat with the grandparents in another part of the house, and the teenager playing online games in his bedroom. All with enough bandwidth left over for general web browsing and making phone calls! Not to mention - a lot of the time the "other end" will not be another end user, but a data centre with huge pipes to the outside world!

There is enough misinformation about the NBN floating around in the media - from other news sources and opposing political parties - without errenous articles such as this one!

Just a note on the Hanlon quote at the top - I'm not suggesting stupidity in this case - just lack of research!

Postscript: Andrew from Digital Tasmania is in the process of contacting said journo, to offer advice in future instances!

Nobody Loves a Neglected Blog!

2011-05-16T15:21:00.001+10:00

Hmmmm no they don't!

Maybe life has gotten in the way a wee bit lately for writing blog posts, but we shall endeavour to fix that... I think that as more starts happening with the house the updates will be more forthcoming. Two months and there should be plenty to write about :D

As for a life update from us, we've been to Adelaide for the national band championships over Easter. Lots of Daddy and Kiddy park time whilst I was playing then a lovely family day at the Zoo on ANZAC day before heading home.

It's now less than 100 days until our EDD for baby #3, but in reality it will probably be at least a week more than that until he/she makes their big entrance... 41 weeks seems to be the normal baby cooking time around here! Having 2 small children already there isn't all that much to do in preparation for the arrival... we need to tidy out a corner of our bedroom for baby's things and I'd like to do a bit more general decluttering around the house and cook ahead some meals that we can eat in the early days but otherwise, we're pretty good.

The children delight, surprise and frustrate us every day :) It's amazing the buttons a 3.5 year old can push... lots that yo u didn't realise you had. Her questioning and logic skills are amazing though, she asks some fantastic questions and draws some brilliant conclusions on her own. We are doing our very best to encourage and nurture this natural inquisitiveness but bedtime isn't the right time to be asking brilliant questions!

I'm also plugging away at my business, have had a few sales in the last fortnight so am desperately hoping that things will pick up from here, that would be great as we've invested quite a bit of money and many hours so far into setting up. Obviously there are still so many things that need to be done but all baby steps.

The last thing I've been doing is knitting... I've rediscovered knitting over the last few months and have actually COMPLETED over 20 items... yes ok, they were all for children but still, that's a record for me. It means I've been spending less time on the computer and more time creating which is good for me :) Knitting is definitely a separate, picture heavy post though, so watch out for a knitting post from me in the coming days.

Anyhow.... *waves, we are still here!!! :D

House update: All systems go!

2011-03-31T23:40:00.000+11:00

How many updates was I going to do this month? Did I promise three or four? It is now 11pm on March 31 so I guess I should get this one out there pretty quick!

Last week we signed the contract to build our new house!

Construction is due to start between April and June; the contracted end date is 1 May 2012.

As expected we will have bits and pieces left to do afterwards; the guest room, home theatre, storage room, and so on - but that's fine by us. The upper level will be where we will be spending most of our time so that is the important bit for us.

The latest plans:

... and it has occurred to me that some people haven't seen the view from our block! Apologies for the blurry panorama stitching issues!

Other random items of note...

- The geothermal heat pump came in at close to $100k... so it was swapped for a ducted electric heat pump... which came in at about $35k - it is now a $10k ceiling mounted unit for the main living area and panel heaters for other areas!

- Some windows have disappeared - the glazing came in at $30k more than expected. Quite a few have gone (eagle eyes can check the plans!), this also helped to get our star rating up (it came in at 5.7 in the end ..)

What is annoying is that the modelling used to calculate star ratings can't "cope" with "different" houses. eg. our cladding will be alucobond/vitrobond. They don't have an equivalent in their system (does everything have to be brick or render???). Our windows on the first floor have a niche which runs all the way around 3 sides of the house - making the roof height at the edge and therefore window height 2990mm. The niche is only about 290mm x 290mm, big enough to fit a roller blind, so the height for the rest of the house is 2700mm (think of it like a giant sunken ceiling). The problem is the star calculations can't deal with that shape of room and must base the calculations on the entire house having 2990mm ceilings, that is a LOT more space to heat! So in practice our house will perform much better than the ratings say in theory.

A little bit about the bathroom plans - the joinery details include: Square above bench sinks, mixer tapes coming from the wall; square ceiling mounted "rain head" shower heads; built in niches in showers for shampoo etc. Tiles are 600x600mm for floors, 600x300mm for walls. Colours can be changed but we have specified slate for now. The best bit - my cousin owns a bathroom superstore - so I'm getting all that stuff through him and supplying the builder/plumber :) Also, underfloor heating for the bathrooms has been estimated at about $1000 a bathroom - so we think we'll go for that.

- Kitchen benchtop - polished concrete bench of that size was, again, going to cost too much, so the architect has changed to an Essastone bench with a finish that resembles polished concrete - at a significantly smaller cost, which we are very happy with!

- The Vitrabond cladding we will be using will be costing about $20k, but installation of it about $40k! That's someone's wages for the better part of a year! The builder is try to negotiate this down ...

- We have also received a copy of the building specification document - which is a 133 page document that specifies the quality expected of the builder on every single detail.. as an example, the dimensions of the doors, number of hinges, minimum sizes of hinges, etc. Includes which Australian Standards they comply to. This kind of thing for every component of the house! Not exactly interesting reading but will be useful!

So that's it for now - deposit being paid next week and hopefully the next update will have a photo :)

Slackness...

2011-03-02T13:21:00.000+11:00

March has started... you know what that means.. we have gone our first full calendar month without making a blog post since we started! Ooops..

I told Emma that we had gone over a month without blogging and she keenly pointed out that technically that's not true, she has been blogging frequently on her business' blog at - http://wrapem.blogspot.com/

In an attempt to rectify this we will try to do one a week for the rest of the month! A house update, a technology update (Sonos and FetchTV), I'll try and get Emma to do a sling or babywearing one, and of course some other news that most of you may know about already ;)

And that was 2010!

2011-01-01T12:50:00.000+11:00

I guess I should do a wrap up of the year, similarly to the wrap up of the decade I wrote this time last year!

It has been a busy year - this time last year we had a 2 year old running round the house and a relatively immobile 3 month old - now we have two very active little children who keep us on our toes!

To keep up with them we have done some work outside the house to make the place a bit more suitable for them and to allow the dogs to have their share as well! The first is to pull down our old picket fence that separated the backyard (which was previously just "the dogs backyard") and have a bunch of black powder-coat gates and fences put in closer to the house itself (for the dogs!). We have had the backyard area levelled, and in December we finally put in a swing set (many thanks to Denis!) and some lush green turf. A much more child-friendly environment!

Of course, frequent readers will know that is only temporary! Much of 2010 has been spent on the design phase of our new house, which we plan to start building in Lenah Valley in 2011. We are hoping to start construction in February/March. There has been plenty on this blog about the house already so I won't go into detail here - but at least once a day something happens that makes one of us mutter "I can't wait until we are in our new place!"

Business wise - Emma's role as a Baby BeeHinds reseller has been going well, and she has started another business - Wrap 'Em - selling baby carriers - woven wraps, slings and other assorted baby gear!

As part of Emma's volunteer work with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, she is undergoing training to complete her Certificate IV in Breastfeeding Education. By the end of 2011 she should be a qualified breastfeeding counsellor!

In September Charles was elected to the committee of Wikimedia Australia - an official chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation which operates and supports Wikipedia (among others). It is a non-profit organisation which promotes the distribution and creation of free cultural works in Australia.

We went to Queensland in August-September for both work and play. Charles attended Microsoft Tech-Ed 2010 on the Gold Coast where he completed his first Microsoft qualification (Windows 7 Configuration). After that, the entire family flew up, and we visited family and friends in Brisbane, Bribie Island and Caloundra. The highlight was meeting Charles' Grandma - the first time she had met Emma, and two of her sixteen great-grandchildren! Not a bad effort for 101 years old!

Our other interstate trip of the year was to Melbourne in May - we spent a week there during Charles' birthday - he and Emma's brother Mark went to see the Socceroos vs New Zealand at the MCG before they headed to the World Cup. The rest of the trip seemed to be focused on Georgia, with trips to the Zoo, Aquarium and Children's Farm, all of which she loved!

Easter usually involves travelling for us - for the National Band Championships which Emma's band, Hobart City Band, competes in. However in 2010 the Championships were hosted in Hobart! The Brass Band was competing in A grade for the first time, after being B grade champions in 2009.

In 2011, with our house build starting, it promises to be a very exciting year for us!

I might get in early now - have a Merry Christmas 2011 and a Happy New Year for 2012!

House update - almost there!

2010-12-27T09:53:00.000+11:00

Hi everyone,
About time for an update! We had another meeting with the architect on December 22nd. Over the last few months he has been working with the engineer, drawing up structural, plumbing and electrical plans, and made a few minor changes to the floor plan to account for these. We also went through the glazing schedule, confirming the sizes and types of all the windows. We also met the builder for the first time!

Latest plan revisions:

There were another 20 or so diagrams/plans with these ones but I won't upload them all - things like updated elevation diagrams, subfloor plan, roof plan, and so on, I won't scan them all :)

Major changes:

- A niche running all the way around the top cornice area of 3 sides of the house - this was because the roof support structure needed a bit more space than what was available (and raising the roof level would have required going back to planning approval) so to keep window sizes the standard height they added a gap. This works out well because it provides a spot where blinds etc. can be installed and then be hidden when they are open - and also allows some niches to be built into some walls.

- Laundry chute location confirmed, after about 4 different options were attempted!

- AV/network cabinet location changed - made it bigger and placed it between the theatre and the garage. Discussions with many AV enthusiasts have let me to believe that cat5/6 will be used for AV in the future (there are adaptors to do so now) so as a result it made sense to consolidate the network and AV runs.

- A step before entering the garage - because the garage is 300mm higher than the rest of the lower floor. I think the step may get in the way a bit, so will raise some alternatives with the architect!
We've also confirmed some floor surfaces:

- Polished concrete in the downstairs hallway (as well as hopefully a polished concrete benchtop)

- Modwood for the decks - modwood is made of sawdust and recycled plastic milk bottles, doesn't require oiling every year or other maintenace, and doesn't splinter!
I've also done some sketchup mockups of some areas to give the architect and builder an idea of what we are after.
Kitchen:

(Appliances are Electrolux oven & induction cooktop, F&P fridge, Robinhood rangehood and Asko dishwasher)

Laundry:

And my work of art, the AV unit!

Construction is now expected to start in March 2011.. which means we may not be in there before Christmas 2011 as we had hoped, but that's ok, we'd rather it be done well than done quick!

That'll do for now, electrical and plumbing to come in a future update!

Picking up the pieces ..

2010-12-06T23:03:00.001+11:00

A year ago, Australia was the favoured nation to win the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Two weeks ago, FIFA's technical reports said England, United States and Australia were the three bids best prepared and capable of hosting a World Cup - Russia and Qatar, the most high risk. Yet, on Friday morning, Russia and Qatar were declared the winners, while England and Australia were eliminated in the first round of their respective votes. What went wrong?

Frank Lowy stated that before the vote, they were confident that they had at least four votes in the first round - maybe as many as six - meaning at least three ExCo members had looked him in the eye and lied. Even afterwards, two members have claimed responsibility for the single vote. Who can he trust?

Clearly politics and backdoor deals played a role, but it isn't as simple as "whoever donates the most money gets my vote". The voting pattern is a curious one:

The number of votes for Qatar and Japan actually decreased after the first round - leading to suggestions that some blocs of members planned to vote in pre-arranged ways in particular rounds, targetting individual nations one by one. USA, Qatar and Australia were the only nations seen as the likely hosts of the event (not to say the other bids weren't good - but too soon after their 2002 hosting). Australia was probably identified as the easiest of the three to "get rid of" early.

Now for a game of "what-if" ... notice how Japan had an extra vote in their first round as opposed to the second? What if that vote was originally going to Australia but was "switched" to Japan just to knock Australia out, as it was deemed a bigger threat? Japan and Australia would be locked 2-2 for last place, leading to a "knock-out" voting round between the two.

A poster on the FourFourTwo Australia forums, girtXc, appears to have some sort of insight into the workings of the FIFA ExCo and has posted an interesting theory. Apparently when the Tahitian delegate Temurii (I'm going to assume people know all about that!) got suspended it had bigger ramifications than just losing a single vote. His theory about the Japan vote is that powerful Qatari ExCo delegate (and Asian Football Confederation chief) Mohammad bin Hammam arranged it so that Japan wouldn't go out in the first round, therefore keeping Japan ExCo delegate Oguru's honour (very important in Japanese culture) and thus ensuring Japan's vote went to Qatar after Japan was knocked out. Talk about swings and roundabouts!

The theories about how it happened can go on forever, and we may not ever know... but what happens from here, for Australia?

The sad thing about losing is that, as well as not hosting, it makes the moronic anti-sockah brigade in this nation think they have the right to spout rubbish about the sport. Rebecca Wilson is already at it. I won't go into detail about this one, if you read it, you know about it, and if you don't believe it happens I'm not going to change your mind.

The corruption has hit several major nations hard - the USA and England are even discussing a breakaway governing body to FIFA. Australia could potentially be a part of this but we don't have the standing to do so - any form of dissent and the AFC - headed by bin Hammam (conflict of interest much?) - will send us back off to Oceania.

When will Australia get another chance? The disappointing thing is that these opportunities come up so rarely for Australia. FIFA has had vague continental rotation policies in the past - usually the rules are changed before a full cycle occurs. With the 2018 and 2022 bid process, the rule was that once a continent hosted, they were not able to bid for the next two. Although it is possible that this will change in the future, if it continues, then 2026 would likely go to the USA, and 2030 to Europe. That puts Australia's next chance at 2034 at the earliest.

I will be 56 by then. Frank Lowy would have well and truly fallen off his perch - he will be 104 if he makes it that far!

... and the big question is - will the government at the time support it? We were lucky in that we had bipartisan support from Kevin Rudd (a "foreign affairs nerd prime minister") and Malcolm Turnbull. It may not be that easy for a government to fork out $45m again, depending on the political landscape at the time.

But then again, in 1986, Melbourne unsuccessfully bid for the 1992 Olympics. 11 votes out of 85 in the first round. Brisbane bid for the 1996 Olympics, 12 out of 86. Imagine if those two experiences were derided as being "wastes of money" - it may have stopped the AOC supporting Sydney's bid for the 2000 Olympics - 30 votes out of 88 in the first round, defeating Beijing 45-43 in the final round, and going on to host the "Best Olympic Games ever!"

In the meantime, lets support the Socceroos at the 2011 AFC Asian Cup - strangely enough, hosted in Qatar in January - after all, it is the game on the pitch that matters!

How many of these books have you read?

2010-11-22T22:01:00.000+11:00

This is a meme going around Facebook at the moment and, I haven't written a blog post for a while so this is as good as place as any!

For a geek I've done a rather poor job! (I've tagged both mine and Emma's in the one list!)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Emma)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Emma)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (Emma)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - read first 3 (Emma)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (Chuq)
6 The Bible - read parts (Emma)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Emma)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (Emma)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read 7 or 8, seen more on stage. (Emma)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Emma)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Chuq)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Emma)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Chuq)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Chuq)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Emma)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Emma)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Emma)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (Emma)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Emma)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Chuq) (Emma)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Emma)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Emma)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Chuq)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Emma)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Emma)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Chuq)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Emma)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Emma)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Emma)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (Chuq) (Emma)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Emma)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Emma)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Chuq) (Emma)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

9 out of 100. How embarrassing! If you don't count the ones which are (a) children's books or (b) books that were a compulsory part of our high school english curriculum, then the ONLY book on the list would be Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

What is even worse is that a significant number of the books on the last are sitting right on our bookshelf and have done so for the past 9 years. Most of them were inherited, not purchased ... I know many of them are classics which is why they are still there!

Some titles on the list do stand out as standard geek fare.. Nineteen Eighty Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Catch 22 and The Time Traveller's Wife are titles that I should really familiarise myself with more!

If I scrape the bottom of the barrel ... I've read the book of Contact, and it WAS better than the movie, does that give me cred? Also there were episodes of Lost named 'The Little Prince' and 'A Tale Of Two Cities' .. there was a lot of CS Lewis references in the show as well. That has to count for something?

Emma scored 27 on this list, quite a few of which she attributes to owning the complete works of Jane Austen, the whole Harry Potter series, and all of The Lord of the Rings books!

Quick plug: If you are a bibliophile - check out http://www.librarything.com - fellow geek John Dalton helps to run this one!

Putting the NBN rollout into perspective

2010-10-23T23:57:00.001+11:00

There has been a bit of news about Australia's National Broadband Network in the media recently - specifically the suggestion that Only 262 homes have been signed up to the NBN so far, in the stage 1 sites of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point. But are the figures really that bad?

The facts:

Three months after activation, the number of homes connected in Tasmania is 262. Including homes that have requested a service but connecting is pending, it is 436.
The number of households passed with the fibre is reported between 3000 and 4000 in difference sources. (Note: The source that said "4000" was from The Australian)

So the percentage of homes that have requested a service is between 10.9% and 14.5% (if you only count the ones already connected, it is between 6.5% and 8.7%)

So, how does this compare to other services?

ABS - 2006 Census - http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/8146.0.55.001Media%20Release12006?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=8146.0.55.001&issue=2006&num=&view=

The 2006 census reports that in Tasmania, 28% had broadband. This was in 2006, six years after broadband was first available.

That media release details comparisons between the 2001 figures and 2006, so the same question was asked at the 2001 census – I can't find the figures though. Still looking! I did find this survey from November 2000 (note – not census):

ABS - Survey on internet usage, November 2000 - http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8147.0/

Stating that percentage of homes with internet access (note any form of internet – not just broadband) was at 37% in Nov 2000 – the year that ADSL broadband was launched. Only two years earlier the same figure was at 19%, and more specifically, regional areas was 13%.

To reiterate:

Dial-up internet had been around since 1994;
In November 1998 (four years later), 13% of households in regional Australia had internet access.

FTTH over NBN has been around since July 2010;
In October 2010 (three months later), 10-14% of households in regional Australia had signed up for a service.

Now I realise it is hard to compare these two exactly, but four years vs three months – thats quite a difference.

(More discussion can be found in this Whirlpool thread!)

A few of my favourite builds

2010-09-25T08:03:00.005+10:00

Enough about our house.. here are some of the other fantastic houses (and houses-in-progress) that I've found on the HomeOne forum. It’s a great resource if you are building a new house, with dedicated sections for everything to do with building a house - kitchens, bathrooms, heating and cooling, lighting, AV, automation, security, flooring, landscaping ... it’s not even restricted to the work itself, with sections on investment, real estate, being an owner/builder and so on.

Many people keep a record of their builds in dedicated threads – there are literally dozens going on at any one time in varying stages of completion! I thought I would share some of the more interesting ones ....

People in Glass Houses is Michelle and Tom’s blog. They are nearing the final stages of completion of their architecturally designed 5 bedroom house in a bushland area only 5 mins from Hobart’s CBD! It is a very modern design with lots of angles and designed for a big family similar to ours.

Chris and Kelly’s blog is called Housearama. They have just finished building a passive solar designed 4 bedroom house in Adelaide, roughly based on a Longridge Madison 255. It features a separate home office, a great kitchen (including a professional wok burner – which is a story of its own!) and lots of “cat features”. This is of course on top of all the smart environmental features like retractable shades, opening skylights and power monitoring features.

Building Our 9 Star Home is the blog of Rodney and Elizabeth in Melbourne. Hopefully the key feature of this house is obvious. Their house will actually be ranked as 9.1 star! Not only do they use passive solar design, but they are going to great lengths to ensure the house is as friendly to the environment as possible through choices such as materials used in their kitchen and type of paint used. One of their friends owns the block next door and they will be sharing a backyard for their vege garden and chickens. Construction hasn't started (last I checked), but I think this is going to be a great one to follow!

Big Red's Castle is worth the link just for the amusement of this post!

And last but not least... they don't have a blog that I can link to but sis & bro-in-law Ben and Laura are also planning to build soon, and drawing on Ben's experience in AV & automation they are planning some pretty smart things for their house! As an example .. they will have an automated watering system for their garden - not that unusual - but the system will take into account time of day, current temperature, recent rainfall, water tank level and weather forecast for the next few days! So long as it isn't called Skynet ...

Before and after - Part 1

2010-09-20T00:47:00.000+10:00

As I alluded to in a previous house update, here are some "before and after" plans of some parts of our new house, compared to similar areas in our current place.

First, the master bedroom (include walk-in robes and ensuite). Note the orientation of the rooms have been adjusted so north is to the top in both cases.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a new house design that doesn't include a walk-in robe - in face many of the pre-designed plans show a WIR and ensuite which combined are bigger than the bedroom itself! Our architect has instead, packed a stack of built-in storage into the area, much more than a WIR could offer! As well as standard built-in robes in both the bedroom itself and the ensuite, there is a walk-through robe on the way in the bedroom (both entrances to the WTR will have cavity slider doors, to allow extra sound insulation and privacy). All of these items will be full-height - making the most of the 2700mm ceilings!

There is also a lot of "low joinery" - about 500-600mm high - in the form of built in bedside tables (extra-wide - just enough space to fit a king size bed in between), and a daybed area near the window. The daybed part will probably not be built initially, to allow for a cot and change table to go there - until we don't need them anymore!

Speaking of windows, there will be a full height one from the bedroom facing the deck, and another full height one from the shower facing the internal deck. Not sure how that shower window is going to work regarding privacy... there are a few details to be worked out!

On to the kitchen/dining/meals areas - yes, these are to scale!

This is one of the areas to gain the most in the new house. One of the hardest parts about doing the map above was working out what room was what in our current house to make the comparison!

At the moment the dining room is the first room that people walk into when they come in the front door, which is not ideal considering how much mess babies and toddlers make when eating! It also means part of the room is basically a hallway which only makes it smaller. The new dining room is twice as big and also features a length of daybed storage (similar to the master bedroom).

It is also physically separated from the kitchen area.. oh the kitchen. If you thought the new pantry looks about the same as the old kitchen - you'd be pretty much right. In fact on the plan above it is pretty hard to spot the old pantry, tucked away there. I've worked out that the volume of our current pantry matches the capacity of the narrow shelf on the eastern wall of the new pantry... and we can't wait!

Also notice the windows - almost all north facing to let in the sun. In our old house the kitchen/meals area - which became the de facto living area - is south facing.

Two of the other nice things we plan for the new kitchen include an appliance cupboard on the end of the bench, and a child gate, built in to the joinery, at the other end. When the child gate is open it is fully recessed into the bench so you don't even know it is there. The meals area will also have a computer desk at one end - which can be used for children to do homework supervised, as a kitchen recipe computer, or as a TV.

So that covers two of the main areas of the house - more to come! In other news, our council plans were approved and in even more exciting news, we will most likely have a builder who can start in January 2011 (given we get all the engineering and detailed plans done by then) which would mean a November 2011 finish! There's a lot to be done before then - I'm currently sorting out my cabling plans (for data/phone/AV/security), which means a lot of researching into home AV distribution as I know next to nothing in that area ... but that's another blog post it itself!

And the winner is ...

2010-08-23T21:40:00.001+10:00

Well, it has been quite an eventful few days in the world of Australian politics. Noone really knows who our Prime Minister will be. All the analysts are currently saying that the coalition will have 73 seats to Labor's 72. On first glance this points to a coalition victory, but it isn't as simple as that!

Enter the independents - or more technically correct, the crossbenchers! Three of them - Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - are sitting independent MPs from regional seats in Queensland and New South Wales who have be re-elected by their elecorate. They are all from rather conservative National Party backgrounds. The other two (Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie - noting Wilkie's position is not confirmed) - are from a different background - both representing urban seats in Melbourne and Hobart, and both from the left side of politics - Bandt being the first Greens representative in the lower house, and Wilkie being a former Green member.

On face value it could be assumed the first three would side with the coalition and the last two with Labor. It is never that simple! After all you would assume that the four independents are no longer members of their party for a reason.

Which brings me to what I personally believe was the only policy in the election that clearly separated the two major parties - telecommunications.

While watching the television coverage over the weekend, as expected there were live crosses all over the nation including the three conservative members. And a picture spoke a thousand words - or rather, no picture. The live crosses were just a still image with audio provided by a grainy mobile phone call. Even though the members pointed out that telecommunications was a big issue in their electorate, the fact that the current situation was being clearly demonstrated only served to reinforce this!

The Greens and Wilkie also ran on a platform of supporting the National Broadband Network so it could be assumed they would side with Labor in this regard - not to mention the fact that the Greens and Liberals are polar opposite ends of the spectrum.

The other factor that gives hope to Labor is that the crossbenchers have indicated that they want to support a stable government. It is not in their interest to see the country go to another election in six months time. These comments have made specific reference to the Senate. After the massive surge to the Greens - their number of Senators will increase from 4 to 9 - perhaps the independents think that a conservative government would not work with a left leaning upper house? It is worth mentioning that the Senate does not change until 1 July 2011. Until then, a Labor Government will need the approval of either the Coalition, or all Greens senators, Family First senator Steve Fielding, and Independent Nick Xenaphon, to pass legislation. After the new senate term starts, only the Greens will need to be appeased. Probably not an issue for a Labor government but it could be a challenge should the Liberals form government.

(As I write this, news has come to light that Wilkie may be not as likely to win Denison as first thought. If it did go Labors way, it may put it at 73-73 for the major parties. That's probably a sign that I should stop writing this, every few hours there is something new!)

House update - models and pictures!

2010-08-06T21:43:00.000+10:00

It's been a long time since the last update, but plenty has been happening! I just haven't kept the blog updated... here is a roundup of the last few months ... and this post will be light on text, high on pictures!

At our May architect meeting, we saw a cardboard model of the house!

(Apologies for the camera-phone blurriness!)

Note the garden and (fortunately) driveway will not be tiered like that - those are the limits of using cardboard as a modelling tool!

At our next meeting in June, we received the final plans that will be submitted to council, including some 3D renders:

If you are wondering what sort of material the black sections of the external facade will be, it is something called Alucobond - I hadn't heard of it until the architect mentioned it! It is a type of aluminium cladding ... I found some images of it used in a residential environment, reproduced from here (click link for bigger images):

It is long lasting and very low maintenance - basically needs cleaning once every ten years - which is great for people who are, lets say, home maintenance challenged such as ourselves!

Our plans are currently with the Hobart City Council and were advertised publicly on July 21st!

The public review period has ended and I don't know if the council received any submissions, but we did receive one call from a neighbour - saying that if we had any clean fill to get rid of, we are more than welcome to have it dumped on his block!

Last of all, I have been playing with Google Sketchup (which incidentally runs quite well under WINE) to design some of the joinery areas. The most complete one so far is the kitchen:

More work to do on that one - and of course more parts of the house in progress!

Tasmania - "No we can't!"

2010-07-12T22:50:00.000+10:00

Last week, the Mercury published an article entitled "Space-age Bass Strait bridge". "Hobart will be linked to Melbourne by a bridge -- in the next 50 to 100 years." it reports. It is part of a proposal by Room 11 (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out are designing our new house!)

Of course, it sounds like a pretty extreme proposal - and didn't the rabid hordes let everyone know! Complaints about "taxpayers are funding these nutters!" (even though they aren't) and "who's gonna pay for this little dream-up?". One particular comment amused me "oil will be of such dwindling availability and so expensive that only the super-rich will be able to afford to drive over it. " Apparently someone thinks we will still be driving petrol-powered cars in 50 years time?

One person seemed to be rather displeased with the suggestion when he suggested that "These people will destroy Tasmania!"

It's quite obvious that no-one looked at the design in context. It is an entrant in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale - an international architecture exhibition. Entrants have been asked to explore possibilities for urban developments 50-100 years in the future. Room 11's entry, Island Proposition 2100, sets out a design which answers the question - "If, in the face of climate change, Tasmania had to accept 5 million eco-refugees, how would they do it?"

The bridge is only one part of this proposal - obviously the Mercury used it as a headline grabber - but it doesn't give credit to the rest of the design. The basis of it is a high-density, urbanised spine running from Hobart, through the Midlands, Launceston, Devonport, Burnie, through to Smithton - and then continuing on in the form of a bridge to King Island and Victoria. This "spine" would contain infrastructure such as high speed (maglev) rail as well as energy generation (wind and solar) and grey water processing.

All these details are available by simply reading the website - obviously many of the comment writers are incapable of doing so!

Tasmania's small, decentralised population and physical separation are the root of so many issues in the state - here is a concept which would solve all of them in one go! And it is just that, a concept. It is designed to make us open our eyes and look at things from a different perspective. But we could never have that in Tasmania - the "can't do" state - could we?

Human Babies...

2010-06-10T13:06:00.004+10:00

Do not have fur, they need contact with other humans for warmth.

They can't walk or run away from predators. They don't camouflage too well either.

They can't find their own food.

They have high energy requirements but a small stomach, so need to feed frequently.

Are rather a lot like Australian marsupial babies, being born helpless and needing to be close to their parents well into toddlerhood. We could learn a lot from koalas and kangaroos.

Australia's World Cup - the bid venues

2010-05-20T00:49:00.001+10:00

Last week, Football Federation Australia submitted its "bid book" - a 750 page document on how Australia would host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup. Among the details contained in it were the Australian sporting world had been waiting for.. the 12 proposed venues that would be used.

Here is the list, and my review of each one (I won't replicate all the images which are available on the official website.)

Just a note about capacities - for those who haven't been following the bid closely (as I have)

All venues have a "saleable" capacity - which is total capacity minus space for corporates VIPs. Generally stadiums are all seated, so generally "standing" areas are not available. This is why many venues are listed as several thousand below their expected capacity.
The minimum "salable" capacity is 40k, for semi finals it is 60k, and for the final, 3rd place match and opening match it is 80k.
Many of the venues will be downsized after the World Cup.

Now, onto the list ...

Stadium Australia – Homebush, NSW - 83,000

In December, the NSW Government suggested that the ground would be modified into a permanent rectangular configuration, and the venue would get a retractable glass roof as a result of our bid! The image supplied doesn't match that, so it seems it may not happen - disappointing, would have been the 'jewel in the crown', but a great venue anyway. I suggest Homebush may be the location of the International Broadcast Centre and so on – facilities may be available from the Olympics?

Sydney Football Stadium – Sydney, NSW - 41,000

A great "minor" venue for Sydney, a shame there isn't much happening to it, but I guess there isn't that much to do.

Blacktown Stadium - Sydney, NSW - 41,000

A new venue in Western Sydney. The design looks nice! It will be built to Good post-WC capacity for Rovers (26k).

MCG – Melbourne, Vic - 88,000

It would be nice to see some sort of redevelopment to improve the venue for rectangular sports in the long term. Fellow blogger Matt Winter's plan would be ideal.

Brisbane Stadium (Lang Park) – Brisbane, Qld - 50,000

It would be nice to see it reach the 60k capacity for a semi-final, maybe they have more work to do!

Perth Stadium (Stadium WA) – Perth, WA - 60,000

A proposal for a multipurpose stadium with adjustable stands has been on the cards in Perth for a few years. It is good to see the general plan making a re-appearance here - common sense won out! Will be a great venue for all sports in WA. Both AFL and cricket can use the venue in it's oval mode, and big Socceroos and Wallabies matches will again return to Perth.

Adelaide Oval – Adelaide, SA - 50,000

Are those stands adjustable, or just majorly redeveloped? I guess since the AFL uses Football Park at the moment, they don't have any existing contract over Adelaide Oval, so if it takes longer before and after the cup to reconfigure the stands that shouldn't be a problem. Adjustable stands would leave Adelaide with a great legacy - without them, Adelaide United is stuck playing in the little 18k Hindmarsh Stadium still.

Gold Coast Stadium (Carrara) – Gold Coast, Qld - 40,000

We'd all prefer Robina Stadium, but it was only built a few years ago to its present side (27k) and I guess with Brisbane an hour away they didn't think it would need upgrading! Carrara won't benefit football but it will be reduced to 27k after the Cup to be a potential venue for AFL, cricket and even a Commonwealth Games bid.

Newcastle Stadium – Newcastle, NSW - 42,000

Looks very nice - and 34k will be a good post-WC capacity for A-League and NRL use.

Canberra Stadium – Canberra, ACT - 40,000

It's good to see the fearmongering about the ACT not wanting to be involved didn't eventuate. This one will be a new venue built right next to the current Bruce Stadium - which itself will be redeveloped as an oval venue to use instead of Manuka Oval.

Geelong Stadium (Kardinia Park) – Geelong, Vic - 44,000

Looks better than I expected in rectangular mode. Not happy about the way it came about (Andrew Demetriou being pig headed) but it will be good for the city. I found a CGI animation of the "conversion" on Youtube. It will be reduced to 37,000 after the World Cup.

Townsville Stadium (Willows Sports Complex) – Townsville, Qld - 40,000

Is this an upgrade? It looks like a complete rebuild! The roof will be great for the Fury during summer. An appropriate post-WC capacity too (30k) for A-League and NRL use.

So which two will be eliminated?

We need twelve venues for our bid book, but as few as ten of them will be selected by FIFA. So which will go?

Maybe Gold Coast – which, even though it's an oval, would be disappointing because it's like a second venue to Brisbane and the city is big enough warrant it.

Maybe Townsville – just because of the cities' size and distance.

Maybe Blacktown – because it's a 3rd venue in Sydney.

Maybe Geelong – would be a shame for the same reason as Gold Coast, being Melbourne's #2 venue.

On the talk of "displacing" the AFL and NRL...

Stadium WA and Adelaide Oval are not currently AFL venues. How does this work? The AFL can't claim to have rights to venues which they don't play in?

WA is a tricky one, to build Stadium WA to completion they have to partially demolish Subiaco. But they would have to do this anyway, whether or not we hosted the WC. If Stadium WA was just built as a matter of course, the AFL would have the exact same issue, but they would put up with it, knowing that after it was completed they could sell another 17k seats per game – no compensation expected.

If Gold Coast and Geelong happen to be the two eliminated venues, we could be in the situation where the ONLY venue requiring compensation to be paid to the AFL would be the MCG – and that may only be used for eight matches! This "compensation formula" could be the best deal the federal government ever made :)

Again with Canberra – new venue – no pre-existing rights to the NRL – what will happen to the old Bruce Stadium next door? Keep it rectangular (for NRL/ARU use) until after the WC?

So where is Tasmania?

Why, missing of course!

Tasmania would not require a 40k rectangular stadium after the World Cup - even I can admit that. But don't forget that six of the venues above are going to be reduced in size by over 10,000 seats after the World Cup!

The Qatar bid - as much as the nation has major logistical issues with size, population, climate and alcohol laws - does have one thing right - the plan for all of their 40k capacity stadiums is to split them in half after the event - resulting in twice as many 20k venues. The FFA could have proposed a 40k rectangular venue in Hobart which, post-WC, became a 20k in Hobart and a 20k in Launceston. As a bonus, such a venue would be "legacy" free - no prior tenants to pay compensation to!

At the moment, the best the state can hope for is a couple of training facilities to be built. In an email from Michelle O'Byrne in January I was told that the state government has proposed two venues in Tasmania for the bid book. In the media this week it was also announced that York Park and Bellerive Oval would be "reserved" for AFL use during the World Cup - is that a strong hint that the training venues are new venues?

Time will tell.. only 196 days to go!

Who will save the World Cup from Victoria?

2010-05-11T08:11:00.000+10:00

"Footy saved from World Cup threat" read the front page of the Herald Sun yesterday. What an alarming title – you would think FIFA was going to roll their tanks in and destroy the AFL headquarters from a headline like that.

So what has actually happened? Let’s pick a few key quotes from the article.

The AFL and the “biggest show on earth” will co-exist if Australia hosts the soccer World Cup in 2018 or 2022. Co-exist is a funny word. It implies some sort of equality. For example, the AFL and soccer don't "co-exist" at the moment - for the best part, the AFL totally dominates it in the media. Does the AFL expect that this will happen during a World Cup hosted in Australia? It won't even be 50-50 - the World Cup will, dominate. The AFL's season continuing during the World Cup is not about whether it is legally allowed to - it is whether the AFL wishes to commit financial suicide by attempting to do so.

Skilled Stadium [Kardinia Park in Geelong], Subiaco Oval, Gold Coast Stadium and Adelaide Oval would also be off limits to the AFL during the Cup. Oh yes, the FFA/Federal Government is taking these venues, modernising them, upgrading their capacity, using them for a couple of months – and then handing the nice shiny new venues back to the AFL to play on year after year. Not to mention the MCG and Homebush. Are we supposed to think the AFL is doing it tough?

The government guarantee appears to contravene a FIFA regulation that a major sport can’t run in the host nation during a World Cup. Actually, the truth is a little simpler than that – the AFL is not a major sport. The FIFA regulation relates to events such as Wimbledon, or the Ashes series. Even Major League Baseball continued in the United States in 1994, and MLB is much bigger than AFL.

[Demetriou said] "We’ve always said we would be providing the MCG and Skilled Stadium [Kardinia Park]" How nice of him to be able to speak for the Victorian State Government and the City of Greater Geelong. Did the AFL "provide" the MCG for the Commonwealth Games, or was it simply that it isn’t theirs to provide?

The AFL has also been concerned FIFA would require the MCG for longer, before and after the tournament. This refers to a proposal to "rectangularise" the MCG temporarily, requiring the ground for longer for conversion, which was announced publicly in December last year. However, this proposal had already been eliminated by the bid taskforce privately before this time and also again publicly about 6 hours after the news story was published (in the Herald Sun, no surprises there). For some reason, despite the fact that it is not going to happen, it gets brought up time and time again by the AFL and the Herald Sun, alongside the equally unlikely threat of "cancelling a season and sending clubs broke".

In fine form as usual, the Herald Sun has followed up with another article today, "League compo for cup games". This is all about the compensation they will receive for ... hang on - what are they being compensated for? They apparently aren't going to stop their season or reduce the number of games. They are mathematically perfectly capable of honouring their existing stadium contracts even with some of them being unavailable, so no issues there. They are going to have to play some games in reduced capacity venues for 10 weeks, certainly - but this is negated by the fact that they are also going to play in increased capacity stadiums for years to come - surely hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government funded infrastructure is enough? In fact, the United States bid - our closest competitor for the 2022 World Cup - is already taking advantage of the ammo being provided to them to promote their own bid - how much compensation is the AFL going to pay the federal government if it is their antics which causes our bid to fail?

Melbourne's self proclaimed title of the "sports capital of the world" is now a joke - nowhere else would you see the largest newspaper in such a city against the World Cup.

I really feel sorry for the hundreds of thousands of Victorians who support both codes, as well as the hundreds of thousands who have no specific interest in soccer but want the World Cup to come here. Unfortunately to the rest of the country and the rest of world, their local media is portraying the state as extremely insular and closed minded.

... and to think that if the World Cup comes here, the Herald Sun would be the first to complain when Melbourne only hosted six matches and Sydney hosts twenty! But why shouldn't Sydney get more? Not only are they upgrading their largest venue - Stadium Australia - by adding 5000 seats and installing a retractable glass roof, they are also offering their secondary stadium (Sydney Football Stadium) as well as offering to build a new 40,000 capacity venue in Western Sydney! The New South Wales Government and the people of Sydney obviously want to host World Cup matches, not treat it like some sort of invading threat.

The AFL can't really be blamed for their actions - their job is to look after their sport - but the Herald Sun is supposed to be a media outlet, not the AFL's PR department.

If I were an international football fan planning the best location to base myself during a World Cup in Australia, I'd be looking at the city with three venues (and within commuting distance to Canberra and Newcastle). Melbourne wouldn't even be on the radar. Is the Victorian Government looking after the interests of the state, or the interests of the AFL?

House before and after: The land

2010-04-28T00:11:00.000+10:00

In a previous house blog post, I mentioned doing a serious of "before and after" posts about how the new house compares to the old one - after all, we already have a house so there must be something different about the new one worth talking about! Here is the first - not focusing on any room this time, but the land and house as a whole.

One of the major complaints about our current house is that it is too small! That isn't strictly correct - square metre wise, it isn't that bad, but it is laid out in such an inefficient way.

In theory, our current house has four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, three living areas, a study, a workshop and three separate outdoor entertaining areas (two decks and a paved area). It doesn't exactly read like a bad real estate agent spiel at all - I have high hopes that when we sell it, the house will be very appealing to someone else with different usage patterns or requirements to us!

In practice, half of the rooms are full of stuff (in boxes or crates if we are lucky - in a pile if not) due to a lack of built-in storage, and the rooms that aren't are .. lets say, very cosy.

The main kitchen/living area is on the upper floor and doesn't have direct walk-out access to the backyard - unless you go out the front door and down the driveway. In addition, the garage is around the back of the house, which means we have a driveway separating one of the other living areas - the downstairs lounge - from the yard area. Neither of these are particularly helpful when you have kids - of course, it wasn't the kind of thing that was on our minds when we were 23!

A picture is worth a thousand words .. so here are a couple of diagrams. The first is our current house on the left, and new house on the right, at the same scale, and both aligned so that up is north. The outline of the old house is based on the Google Maps satellite view, and the outline of the new house is based on a diagram provided by our architect.

The new block is about 20% larger than the old one, and the new house also has a much bigger footprint. I didn't think the block difference was particularly obvious from this map. Note one thing which isn't apparent from this picture is that the old house has the same floor area on both levels, whereas in the new house the ground floor is only about 60% the area of the first floor.

The 'garden' area on this diagram pretty much means 'the rest' - some bits are lawn, but many areas are concreted pathways, rock gardens, retaining walls, or otherwise areas which are impractical for use as 'backyard' due to shape and slope. Note that this applies equally to the new house as well - it can't be helped on a sloped block - but at least we are taking it into consideration this time and making an effort to minimise it!

The second diagram shows both floors of the old house, and then matches up the corresponding room locationss on the first floor new house. Note that these images are also the same scale - it looks totally wrong, especially compared to the previous diagram, but I have triple-checked and put it down to the fact that the old house outline on the first diagram included the eaves.

As you can see almost all of the old house will "fit" on the first floor of the new house, with a room to spare (eventually for the third child)! This is great as it means we (including the kids) generally won't be running up and down the stairs constantly - pretty much only when we leave the house.

The unmarked areas on the old house ground floor include the garage, laundry, and storage/workshop/office area. I won't worry about these ones in this post, but they will get their own post eventually when I do the room-by-room comparisons!

Am I a greenie?

2010-04-23T23:37:00.000+10:00

People seem to like to categorise other people.. everyone fits into neat little boxes. You can be a bogan, a hippie, a geek, a jock.

The hippie/greenie category is an interesting one. Do I fall into this category or not?

Let's see..

* I support the Bell Bay Pulp Mill
* I use cloth nappies
* I want my next car to be electric
* I would support a wind farm built near me
* I think most of the anti-logging protests are unwarranted
* I think the government should subsidise most of the cost of a basic PV solar setup and rainwater collection tanks for all households
* Had I been of voting age at the time I would have supported the Franklin Dam
* I don't really eat much meat
* I support the Ralph's Bay canal development
* I support the R&D by the state government into tidal, wave and geothermal power generation
* I would support a nuclear power plant in my suburb
* I support the proposed Hobart Northern Suburbs Railway
* I support the demolition of 10 Murray Street
* I am building what people would call a "large" house

As you can see they vary from one extreme to the other! I could elaborate on each of these.. and maybe I will in a future blog post. But I think the general theme that is different the green movement of 20 years ago has changed. Back then it was all about NOT doing certain things because it was bad for the environment. Now, it is all about building things in a sustainable manner. These days it is possible to generate electricity without burning coal. It is possible to have a baby without putting two tonnes of disposable nappies into landfill. It is possible to built a zero emission transport system.

We don't have to choose between development and sustainability any more - we can have both!

Run!

2010-04-13T23:25:00.000+10:00

It's probably no secret if you have been noticing my updates on Facebook, but for anyone who has known me since school (or shortly after), well, I hope you are sitting down - yes, I run!

So what has inspired me to do this? Wii, iPhone and Facebook. (There, is that the Chuq you are more familiar with?)

It started when I got Emma a Nintendo Wii (with WiiFit) for Christmas. That was an amusing story in itself, she asked for one and I was adamant it was too expensive. I'm pretty sure she thought it was a lost cause up until Christmas Day! We both started clocking up an hour each a day of running, slalom skiing, juggling, karate, boxing and flapping your arms madly like a bird. In any case it was enough for us to work up a sweat. It also lets you do a body test which measures your weight and BMI, and along with a balance test, your "Wii Fit age" - basically, what sort of state your body is in. I wasn't thrilled when it told me I was 41 on the first day, but I wasn't surprised either!

In January, my super fit sister-in-law Laura asked if I wanted to go running with her and Ben around Risdon Brook Dam. I thought, why not, lets see how the Wii Jogging compares to the real thing. I quickly installed Runkeeper on my iPhone - after seeing it used by friends on Facebook - and set off. As you can see from the map, after 3km I was buggered.

A couple of weeks later the boss of my department at work was asking around for volunteers - he had signed up for the Hobart Run The Bridge, a 10km fun run, but had to pull out and needed a substitute. I knew a few others who were running/walking the event so I thought, why not? ("Why not" seems to be a common theme here!) I would only be walking it anyway.

The big day came and my plan was to alternate running 2km then walking 2km. I started off with a 500m walk (simply because it was too packed to travel any more than that) to warm up, then started on the run. In the end I walked from 3km to 4km (up Rosny Hill) and 7km to 7.5km (past the Cenotaph) but I shocked myself and ran pretty much all the rest! (Runkeeper map here)

Well, that was it - I had the running bug. By having details of my runs (times, distances, speeds, calories burned) published to Facebook, it gave me a bit of accountability as I knew that everyone would know how much I was (or wasn't) doing. It keeps track of the totals for each week and month so I can set myself targets (either distance or speed).

Emma has started tracking her walks (which are a lot easier to do when you have two children in a pram) and so far she has clocked up over 150km!

I've set a few personal bests, which is why I had put off writing this post - I keep hitting new milestones! The most recent has been averaging over 10km/h for 6km. 5-7 km seems to be my "sweet spot" at the moment. This is just as well, since my upcoming schedule includes the Mothers Day Classic (8km on May 9) and City to Casino (7km on May 16). I'm lucky to have a fantastic employer who pays not only for sports tops but for registration for events such as these.

Needless to say we don't get on the Wii much any more - usually only just for a quick weigh-in. It doesn't seem to be hurting - between us we have lost 18kg and burned 19000 calories in a bit over 3 months! I'm almost tempted to get some Withings WifiScales ... but that would be a bit geeky wouldn't it?

The Hare-Clark system in action

2010-04-04T23:08:00.001+10:00

The Hare-Clark voting system as used in Tasmania's multi-member electorates, is one of the fairest political systems in the world. In the recent Tasmanian election, five members are elected from each of the five electorates, which make a total of twenty-five members in the House of Assembly.

One of the benefits of this system is that the end result is very similar to the will of the voting public.

Take a look at Australia's federal lower house, the House of Representatives. This system uses single member electorates. Each of the 150 seats nationally elects a single member using preferential voting. But look at the last federal election - over 16% of voters chose a member outside of the major parties (ie. Greens, Democrats, Family First, another smaller party or another independent) as their first preference - but in the final makeup of the house, only 2% of the seats are represented by a non-major party.

In the recent Tasmanian election we see how the system *should* work. The first preference votes received were split between Labor 37%, Liberal 39% the Greens 21% and other parties 3%. The final distribution of seats is Labor 10 (40%), Liberal 10 (40%) and the Greens 5 (20%). A much more accurate representation of the choice of the people.

However, people need to know how to work the system to their advantage! As you can see above, the result was very close - particular in Denison where the fifth seat was between Liberal Elise Archer and independent Andrew Wilkie. The graph below, originally from Antony Green's Election Blog (an excellent resource) demonstrates it well. (Note this particular graph was originally from this post.)

Along the bottom of the graph, you see each candidate as they (or in the case of those who secured a quota, as their excess votes) are eliminated. When one of the coloured lines goes to the bottom of the graph, it means they were the last candidate for that party. The dark grey line near the bottom shows "exhausted" votes. Voters were only required to enter numbers 1 to 5 - anything above that was optional. When one of the ballot papers "runs out of numbers" so to speak, it becomes an "exhausted" ballot.

Notice the rather small difference between the final Liberal candidate (Archer) and the independent (Wilkie) at the end of the count.

Now, notice by how much the grey bar rose when the last Labor candidate (Bacon's excess) and the last Green candidate (Burnett) were eliminated! It seems these were people who voted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for either Labor or the Greens, and no-one else. These votes are often wasted (as it is very unlikely that one electorate will elect five members from the one party) as the votes often "flow" onto other parties.

Without making predictions as to who would vote for who, I'd say it would be likely that most Labor voters would put any other party above the Liberals, and most Greens would put Wilkie before any other party. The second point in particular can be demonstrated by the large gain Wilkie received when Burnett was eliminated.

If only a small fraction of the the 1-2-3-4-5 Labor or Green voters had've put #6 as Wilkie, we would be looking at a parliament with 10 Labor, 9 Liberal, 5 Green and 1 Independent - which clearly would have a massive effect on who makes the next government!

House update

2010-03-26T23:55:00.000+11:00

We have our first official design back from our architect! Latest floor plan below:

(click for larger image - also note, these were on A3 so I couldn't scan the entire page (including the block at the bottom of it), please remember these plans are copyright Room 11, just like the ones in my last floor plan post - there, that's the legal bit out of the way!)

Changes include:
* Some room sizes have been changed, e.g. the front bedrooms are longer, to allow for extra hallway cupboards.
* The guest bedroom has also been slightly increased in size.
* An additional alcove near the laundry for the chest freezer and beer fridge.
* A laundry chute from the kitchen to the laundry (which is a bit out of line at the moment - a work in progress)
* The pantry/master bedroom doorway area has been rejigged to allow for a small desk in the kitchen.
* Adjusting the western wall of the first floor to add some extra built-in space.
* Kitchenette in the home theatre.

The biggest change is of course the big "extra" room at the back of the ground floor. This came about when we were discussing future expansion capabilities ("just in case") and we thought it would be the best spot, and it was be easier to excavate while building rather than try to do it in the future (which would be pretty much impossible).

The trade-off of course is that of cost. Our architect has made it no secret that this is not going to be cheap - at least he is not setting us up for a big shock! We have therefore made the decision to leave the guest bedroom, guest bathroom, home theatre and the spare room downstairs totally unfinished (no plaster, floor, painting or electrical - just the plumbing fittings in the bathroom). Only the hallway and laundry will be completed (and obviously the garage will have very little work required in it).

One thing we have noticed is how well bedroom 4 fits our original "multi-purpose" room - its visible from the kitchen, out of the way of the rest of the house, has glass windows/doors between it and the rest of the living area ... but of course we would lose a bedroom. We'd need to: stop at 2 kids, or make two of them share a room, or get the extra room downstairs done... no, I'll stop thinking about that now!

I think I'll do a series of "before and after" house posts which include comparisons in areas between our current house and the new house. I think it would be a good opportunity to point out not only the good bits of the new house but the bad bits of the old house!

The Boy Eats!

2010-03-19T22:36:00.005+11:00

Can it be? Is the small boy really SIX months old? Alas yes, it is true! Six months is a big milestone... time for solids! Say goodbye to tidy mealtimes (who am I kidding, we have a toddler) and ever-so-delightful exclusively breastfed baby poo and get ready for messy floors and messier nappies.

Of course it is inevitable, they do need to eat eventually, and he was showing all the signs... very interested in mealtimes, chewing at us, able to manipulate smaller objects into his mouth, nice strong boy able to sit up in the highchair, tongue thrust reflex well and truly gone, drooling up a storm ready to start digesting all that foody goodness and of course, trying to swipe food when it was left in close proximity. He even managed to steal a dried cranberry from his sister a few weeks back.. he sat there looking most impressed with himself as I prised it from his little fist.

So, being a lazy family we don't bother with purees... straight to grown up food. "WHAT???" I hear you ask... "but... won't he choke?" umm no, well at least it's not any more likely than a baby eating smooth mush, in fact there is reason to believe that a baby feeding him or herself is less likely to choke as they are controlling the rate at which food enters their mouth. It is a fantastic thing to watch... he will bite (well, gum - no teeth yet) off a piece of food, move it around in his mouth, chew then gag. Your heart is in your throat the first few times but you soon learn to watch for any signs that indicate that they may be getting into trouble. Soon enough a piece of food will emerge from the tardis. Seriously, I have no idea how some of these bits fit in there in the first place, but he has managed to work out that he has bitten off more than he can chew - literally - and out it comes. I love that we are teaching him to eat and participate in mealtimes without having to cook him special food, and without a gazillion ice cube trays taking up valuable freezer space.

So far he's had... avocado, sweet potato, pumpkin, potato, carrot, runner bean, snow pea, tomato, broccoli (the only thing he's consistently rejecting), steak, toast, a fruit bun he swiped from me one day, banana, mango, watermelon, peach, apple, pear and yoghurt. No reactions so far, but we're really not expecting any.. and oh.my.gosh... the boy can EAT!

Some pictures for your viewing pleasure...

First solids... avocado on toast

First sweet potato and pumpkin... polished it right off

Mmmmm Steak!

Yes... I did this all by myself :-)

Bigger interwebs for Tassie!

2010-03-15T23:17:00.001+11:00

There have been a couple of news tidbits about the National Broadband Network and general Tassie broadband news over the last week ...

By the way, this is my first post on the "broadband" category of this blog - it only took 2 1/2 months! I recognise that some readers are not technically inclined so I'm happy to answer questions in the comments if anyone has any!

The first one is the announcement of the locations for stage 3 of the NBN. Where stage 1 and 2 were basically a few towns, stage 3 covers many suburbs in the major cities.

Unfortunately for us, the suburbs listed do not include Lenah Valley! (They do include Glenorchy, but I wouldn't expect anything to be live until at least mid-2011, by which time we will - hopefully - be close to moving.)

View NBN locations - Stage 3 in a larger map

Areas in Hobart to miss out include anywhere north of Berriedale on the western shore, anywhere north of Geilston Bay on the eastern shore, anywhere east of Mornington/Howrah, the Moonah/New Town/Lenah Valley area, and anywhere south of the city (except for Kingston)

The good news is that Internode's DSLAM deployment is well on track - most of them are live or pretty much ready to go live - a lot of their deployments here have been external to the exchange (i.e. the green cabinets that you see on the nature strip). people on Whirlpool have been sneaking up to them to see if they are making noise! Internode has 3 outages scheduled for the early hours of Tuesday and Wednesday morning this week related to Tasmania so the consensus is that it can't be far away.

As a comparison to the NBN map above, see below for an example (my estimates only!) of the coverage area of the central Hobart exchanges that Internode has their equipment in. (The others are located in Kingston, Launceston and Devonport.) I would have thought the NBN would target areas such as Austins Ferry/Granton, Lower Sandy Bay/Taroona, Old Beach/Otago, which are NOT covered by the upcoming DSLAM deployments!

View Internode DSLAMs in a larger map

Note - I know this doesn't include northern cities, or Kingston, or Netspace DSLAMs - sorry, a bit of systemic bias!

The third interesting bit of news is a combination of these two - Internode, iiNet and iPrimus have announced they will be partnering with the NBN to provide internet access over the new network when it goes live to homes in Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point in July. The best bit is this quote - "The ISP [Internode] will offer existing FTTH products on Tasmania’s NBN. Prices start at $49.95 per month for 5GB of quota. Internode also supports 100Mbps services geared towards business users starting from $99.99 per month." This is a pretty good sign that the retail plans available to residents of FTTH estates on the mainland will be the ones available via the NBN. The rest of the plans are available at Internode's website.

Of course I can't finish my first post about broadband without a plug for Digital Tasmania - a consumer action group, created "to give a voice to the views and needs of Tasmanian consumers in the digital age". Check the site for information on the groups aims!

Atheism - because it's logical!

2010-03-10T21:42:00.000+11:00

Warning: If you are religious and thin-skinned then stop reading now!

Imagine there’s no religion. (No, I’m not channelling John Lennon.) Imagine that someone comes up to you and tells you that there was a man who turned water into wine, who walked on water, who rose from the dead. Imagine that he told you that the earth was less than 10000 years old despite scientific evidence that it is over 4 billion years old. You would think he was crazy.

So why is it that when a billion people believe it, it becomes acceptable?

Evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins was on ABC1 program Q&A this week and as expected he ruffled a few feathers. I’ve known who he was for a long time, but have never read any of his books or heard him speak until tonight. He has quite a knack for phrasing his arguments in such a way that it is difficult to logically refute them. But I guess that is the point – his arguments are that the rules of our society should be based on logic and reason.

He was seated next to Family First Senator Steve Fielding. Family First is well known as a Christian fundamentalist party, although for some reason they don’t promote this fact very strongly! Dawkins asked Fielding straight out, and directly "Do you believe that the earth is 10000 years old?" a.k.a. asking if he believed in creationism. This clearly made him very uncomfortable and cagey. "Look, different people have different views, and I think it’s up to each person to decide what they choose to believe." Of course, it turns out he did (being an evangelical Christian), but the question is, why didn’t he want to answer? Is he ashamed of his beliefs? Did he have a sudden realisation that saying "Yes, I believe in creationism" sounds as ridiculous as "Yes, I believe in the Easter Bunny"?

Another point that Dawkins brought up was the brainwashing of children. Kids of strongly religious parents are told “you are , that is the religion that you belong to”. Forcing this sort of belief onto a child is wrong – they should be told “There are people called Christians who believe this, people called Jews who believe that, people called Muslims who believe the other” – and then let the child decide for themselves when they are old enough. If this happens the child will realise that all these different belief systems conflict with each other and none of them can be correct! I recall a story posted on a forum a few years ago (around the time of the last census) where the question on religion was being filled in, and the person’s mother refused to allow him to list himself as "atheist" – because he was christened a Catholic - and there was a $1000 fine for lying on the census!

I remember at chapel at school, halfway through a hymn, looking up and thinking "What the hell (no pun intended)? There are a bunch of teenagers and grown adults here singing to a big invisible man in the sky, who no-one has ever seen, telling him how wonderful he is and that we are insignificant to him. A room full of people doing this and no-one is questioning it? Is everyone here completely mad?"

As for the link between religion and morality – why do some people need to base their behaviour on (using Christianity as an example) the promise of going to heaven or the threat of going to hell? Wouldn’t a truly moral person not need to be bribed in this way?

Religion might have been useful in the dark ages when humans didn’t understand a lot about the world, and the leaders at the time needed a way to control the underlings… I'm sure at the time it worked well on the less educated. Since then, however, we have developed this wonderful thing called "scientific method" – it lets you discover things about the world using observation, empirical evidence and reasoning!

Tasmanians are a funny bunch ...

2010-03-02T00:03:00.000+11:00

Tasmanians have somewhat of an inferiority complex ... like the youngest child in a large family, you tend to get forgotten about. A quick look through my (and my friend's) Facebook groups about Tasmania reveal groups begging for teams in the AFL and A-League. There are groups begging for the Big Day Out, Foo Fighters and AC/DC to include us on their schedule. There are those who want Krispy Kreme and Ikea to set up shop here, who want digital radio available here, paintball to be legalised, a Tasmanian venue as part of our World Cup bid .. even to complain that Tassie was omitted from My Kitchen Rules!

Sometimes there have been successes - the Basslink fibre optic cable is now going, bringing us cheaper broadband. Bellerive Oval got their lights and hosted a sold-out international Twenty20 match last month. Tasmanians got One HD eventually - a few months after the rest of the country.

In short, we want to be treated as an equal as the other five states! Our population may be smaller but there are some services that need to remain in the state - we can't just hop in the car and drive to Melbourne whenever we want!

It was rather interesting news this week to hear that Professor Jan Gehl, an architect and urban planner from Denmark, has been hired by the Hobart City Council to design a new vision for the CBD. He has previously done similar things very successfully for Copenhagen, London, New York, Melbourne and Sydney. What a fantastic coup for little ol' Hobart to score his services!

Hobart certainly needs a bit of help - for those who aren't familiar with the area, central Hobart is kind of split in half - the CBD area and the waterfront area are separated from each other by Davey and Macquarie Streets - two one-way streets, four lanes each, which are pretty much the only route between the north and south of the city.

So, what is the local response to Professor Gehl's plans - all these people who want Hobart to have the services and facilities of cities four or ten times their size must surely be supportive of him, right?

The comments from the Mercury articles (1) (2) (3) tell the story. Many are extremely supportive, but sadly there are some that are typical of the other half of Tasmanians. Paraphrasing: "We don't want to be another clone of Melbourne or Sydney" Hmm, if you look at the cities that Gehl has previously worked with, they are all quite unique - not clones of each other! "What do all the elderly people do if no cars are allowed?" Whoever said cars were not allowed? Gehl's designs generally encourage walking/cycling and discourage cars in the city centre - but 'discourage' is different from banning them!

This one really gets to me: "We are a small city, and we like it this way, leave us alone" - ah, no. The reason so many of our young people leave for the mainland as soon as they are able is because Hobart (and Tasmania in general) is not big enough to be able to provide all the services that they are after. Hobart is a capital city, not a rural village, and should be treated that way. If you want to live in a rural area, perhaps you would like it more at Richmond, Huonville, Seven Mile Beach or New Norfolk. Meanwhile, let's grow our cities - so one day we might get that Foo Fighters concert!

Toddlers and the toilet

2010-02-22T20:57:00.003+11:00

No more nappies... most parents of small kids dream of the day their toddler will toilet train. Let's get one thing straight... nappies are easy. When your child is in nappies they wee or poo as the case may be in their nappy, then you change it when you have a second. It doesn't matter if they are in the pram or the car, it can wait.
When your bundle of joy has started wearing underpants, or 'nickies' as they are known in our house things change. They go to the toilet on their schedule, not yours. If they need to wee/poo/whatever, you drop everything and take them as you can't take the chance that they are just kidding.

G has been dry during the day for about 4 months now, she decided shortly after her 2nd birthday that she was big enough to do her business in the potty/toilet and really hasn't looked back. Until last week when we had a bit of a regression she had had very few accidents. We are still doing night time nappies but that doesn't worry me in the slightest, she will be dry in her own time and there is no pressure, I was quite happy to keep changing her nappy during the day too but the fact that it was so easy reassures me that she was well and truly ready.

I had a rotten afternoon. Saturday night everything was removed from the boot of the family car as I was doing a market stall for the ABA and had to fit in a board, change table and some suitcases of literature and changing supplies... so come today I had an empty boot, containing only a stroller. Everything else from my car was at Chuq's work.

So, after our walk we had to go and deliver some nappies, no problems! Except for the fact that the skateboard for the stroller and one of the orders was at work with Chuq. No worries, we went and collected them. 'Do you need anything else put back in your car?' he asked. 'No, I don't think so' I replied. Fool.

So we head into the city to deliver the first order, easy one just have to pop it in her letterbox. The traffic was rubbish... it was after school time and had just started bucketing with rain. Took us ages to get there. Got out of the car, quickly stuffed the breastpads in said letterbox and then got back in the car. Greeted with the dreaded words 'mummy, I got poooooo'. I turned around to miss 2 and a half (almost) and said 'do you REALLY got poo?' she nods. Crap. The potty... it's not in the car, it's still in Chuq's car at his work. Deep breaths.

I turn back around... 'OK, can you hold on?' I toy briefly with the idea of putting one of the baby's nappies on her... it will fit but will it hold a full toddler wee? Doubtful.
More deep breaths. 'Ok, mummy will take you to the toilet, it will be a few minutes though'. After school traffic, bucketing rain... it takes about 20 minutes to drive about 1.5km and get into the carpark. Haul both kids out of the car and put little man in the stroller, little lady on her skateboard on the back (and doesn't she love that). Head down to the parenting room and get to the toilet... can't fit in with the stroller so just leave the door open. She sits up and hangs on... 'I don't got wee'. Deep breaths. 'You DO got wee, Mummy wasn't even coming into the city, we have stopped here just so you can do wee, please sit back up on the toilet and try'.
Success, thank goodness.

Whilst we are there I figure little boy should have his nappy changed too as he made some suspicious noises earlier. He doesn't disappoint either, full nappy. I manage to get poo on his feet, legs, change mat and overalls trying to clean it all off.
I look over at the couple sitting in the feeding area feeding their tiny newborn a bottle and wonder if we've amused them enough for one day. They would have heard every word in the toilet and also had my running commentary as I changed H's nappy. G asks if we can get that babycino (promised earlier) now, I tell her we'll see what we can do. I decide that we don't have time and promise her I'll make her one when we get home.

By the time we deliver the last of the nappies and get home, poor H is screaming his little head off probably from sheer hunger as it's been over 3 hours since his last feed. I'm a wreck from listening to my baby scream and not be able to do anything about it and am so glad to see our house so we can all bundle inside and I can feed him.

After we eat, G gets her babycino. I had a hot chocolate too, we both had a tic-toc (or two). I might keep the coffee machine out for a while :-)

Don't mention the election!

2010-02-19T23:09:00.003+11:00

Are you a Tasmanian with an opinion? Specifically, a Tasmanian who uses the internet to post your opinion on the upcoming state election?

Be careful - since 6pm tonight (Friday, February 19), any online commentary about the state election must include your full name and address. This is according to section 191 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act.

This is a completely impractical situation. The law covers all kinds of internet activity including Facebook status updates and Twitter posts. For obvious reasons, many people are not comfortable with their full home address being linked publicly to either of these accounts. Some reasons, such as privacy and risk of stalking or assault are obvious, but there are also some less obvious reasons.

Digital Tasmania, supported by groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation, has written to the electoral commissioner requesting to not enforce this particular law, and for the leaders of the political parties to review the legislation when parliament next resumes after the election. (Media coverage: ABC, iTWire, The Examiner)

The lack of practicality of this law was demonstrated by (or lack of) by iBleeter on Twitter who has started a drinking game - take a drink each time you see an example of the law being broken. He was probably off his face after the first couple of hours, after breaches were spotted on the Facebook or Twitter feeds of David O'Byrne, Lisa Singh, Daniel Hulme, Will Hodgman, Jeremy Rockliff, ABC News Tasmania, The Mercury, Kim and Dave, Bob Brown, Forestry Tasmania, David Bartlett and Nick McKim. Clearly if the Electoral Commission don't want to have a mockery made of this law they should prosecute all of the above.

Lisa Singh's breach is particularly amusing as she was on Stateline tonight - along with Cassy O'Connor and Brett Whiteley -where they were asked about the s191 law, and all of them supported it in its current form.

Even Mercury cartoonist Jon Kudelka has stated he will not be publishing his cartoons online until after the election.

One Western Australian has come to our rescue - just enter anything you want at his site at http://s191.org and he will automatically generate an authorisation for you - with his address way over in WA attached to the end. No risk of vigilantes who disagree with your stance on the pulp mill, the Polytechnic, or water reforms egging your house!

And on that note - http://s191.org/56.

Typhoid Mary

2010-02-10T10:16:00.003+11:00

Or shall we call her.... Gastro G :-S

**disclaimer... you may wish to stop reading now**

We had a fabulous long weekend... our first bout of gastro supplied undoubtedly by childcare. The first to fall victim was our beautiful baby boy... obviously infected by the love and kisses bestowed upon him by his sister immediately as she walks in the door from daycare of an afternoon.

Friday evening he vomited in his cot 3 times without a cry or any sign to let us know something was amiss... such a placid little thing he is that even on the third time (which I was standing outside the door for and recognised as a spew), soaking wet and stinking, vomit through his hair he didn't cry. I thought nothing of it other than, oh he's been vomiting so got him cleaned up, took him back to bed with us and fed him again.... and wore the lot. This is where I start to worry. My not quite 5 month old baby is unable to keep down breastmilk... something is seriously wrong! I tried again over the night, just letting him suck for a minute and then taking him off to try and just get small amounts of fluid over him, keeping him upright after feeds. In the end I threw Chuq out, propped myself up with a heap of pillows and just tried to rest with him in arms. He got a couple of hours sleep I got less. 5.30am and I try another feed. Wore it again and made the decision to take him to the hospital. Left home at 7am, him having not kept down a feed for nearly 12 hours I was starting to get concerned about dehydration. I don't know who it was who told me that if you need to take a child to the ED take them first thing in the morning but bless you.
We were processed and triaged pretty promptly... the triage nurse took one look at him and exclaimed with a huge grin on her face 'well, aren't you ugly' and managed to coax a smile out of my very flat baby boy.

So we were seen pretty quickly and I gave him another feed whilst waiting for the doctor. I caught my first letdown in a towel, thought it might be too much for him and then fed him for about 10 minutes and he fell asleep. Of course he didn't throw up one drop whilst in the hospital so we were off again on our merry way by 9am.
I went to grab something to eat, but a birthday present and wandered the city for a couple of hours as the little mite had fallen asleep and there was no way I was waking him. Still no spew, and no indication this was a horribly contagious, fast hitting gastro.

Arrived back at my parents' house where I was supposed to have spent the morning shovelling concrete and he had spewed in the car, only a tiny bit though.
The day went on, one more power spew, some small spews and then the other end started. Oh.my.goodness. Baby Beehinds Petite AI2s are AMAZING! How does a nappy so small contain a poo of such magnitude? As the day wore on, he was much brighter, almost back to normal. Thank goodness that was over. Oh how naive.
Sunday morning we wake to find that nobody has been sick overnight. Chuq heads out very early to do the 10km 'Run the Bridge' fun run. Mum and Dad have very kindly Kept G overnight so H and I stayed in bed until he got home.

Early afternoon I packed both kids up into the pram and did my 6km circuit, a couple of minutes faster than last time too! Felt pretty light headed when I got home but nothing a glass or two of fizzy soft drink didn't fix. Had continued light headed episodes over the rest of the day, just put it down to the walk. Wrong.

Dinner time... I looked at it and headed back to the couch. No, Chuq's cooking is NOT actually that bad. I just couldn't bring myself to even consider eating.
And thus begins another VERY long night. I doubt I slept a wink.. if I wasn't gastro-ing it up or feeding a baby I was laying down with such a bad headache there was no chance of me sleeping. Then half way through the night I heard footsteps in the hallway and the other adult spewing up his guts. Uh-Oh.

Come 7.30am I phoned my parents to see if they could take miss G for the day as there was no way we could look after an active toddler given that neither of us could stand without a headspin. No, Mum had it too.

G watched more TV on Monday than the rest of her life combined I think (OK, slight exaggeration but she has never ever before had the TV on all day... she actually asked to turn it off at one point!). I spent most of the day in bed physically not able to get out, Chuq was mainly on the couch watching G. By 5pm after a nice long nap with H I felt well enough to put on a load of washing. Didn't go to bed until late but ended up feeding H ALL night anyway. I'm guessing that after H being sick then me catching it my supply had taken a bit of a beating.

So, Tuesday... Chuq has stayed home from work in case he is still contagious. G and I braved the supermarket for a few things for lunch, rang Mum to see how she is and she tells us that Dad has caught it too. Fabulous... the man who cannot handle spew is vomiting. At least we feel OK Tuesday.

Wednesday everyone is better finally, Chuq back at work.

G is still well. She is now to be known as Gastro G.

Tasmania United survey results released

2010-02-05T13:30:00.000+11:00

The Tasmania United FC taskforce has announced the result of the public sentiment survey which was carried out over January.

1000 Tasmanians from across the state were surveyed and the results released by the taskforce have been very positive, with over 75% of people surveyed supporting the concept of a Tasmanian A-League team, 16% of respondents stating they were likely to become a member of the club.

This 16% includes 5% (of total respondents) who said they were "very likely" to become a member. Taskforce chairman John McGirr said that this figure suggested that a Tasmanian A-League club could expect up to 18,000 members. What a result that would be – even half that amount would be more than any club bar Melbourne Victory!

Possible attendance figures were also very positive. The taskforce’s feasibility study has previously suggested that the ideal arrangement for home games would be a 50/50 split between Hobart and Launceston. 35% of people in the south stating they would attend a match played in Hobart, while 45% in the north and 35% in the north-west stating they would attend a match in Launceston.

Doing the maths, this would work out to 71273 people attending matches in Hobart, and 74178 people attending matches in Launceston. In a 13 match home season, this would work out to an average crowd of 11188.

This figure is very conservative as it doesn’t allow for:

a)      Supporters travelling from the north to the south for matches (or vice versa - the percentage of people who suggested that they would attend a match at the other end of the state hovered around the 8-10% mark).

b)      Supporters attending more than one game

c)       Supporters from rural areas in the north-east, midlands, west coast, east coast, or Huon area

d)      Interstate supporters travelling to Tasmania

Of course as usual, the naysayers are up and about, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post. One comment on Walter Pless' blog suggested that Tasmania's experience in the NBL and VFL are relevant to the potential for a Tassie A-League team. He failed to mention our cricket team (which, although crowds are generally low, are comparable with domestic cricket crowds nationwide) and of course the large crowds which attend AFL and A-League matches at York Park. If we can attract over 6000 people to a practice match between two non-Tasmanian teams in the middle of winter, how many would our own team attract?

If you want to know the answers to that question, TUFC has released a full breakdown of the statistics in a followup post on their site.

The bid taskforce can now comfortably state that they have the community support for a team. The leaders of all three major political parties in the state have publicly stated their support for a Tasmanian A-League team. The only box left to tick now is corporate support, which will be the focus of the business case, due to be completed in the next couple of months. Fingers crossed!

More coverage:

Southern Cross news story - 3 Feb 2010
ABC News - "Tas A-League pitch gains ground" - 3 Feb 2010
The Mercury - "Support for soccer bid" - 4 Feb 2010

The floor plan

2010-01-29T17:05:00.001+11:00

I received the approval to post the floor plan a couple of weeks ago, but realised I hadn't posted it here yet - so here it is for all who are interested!

Some notes:

* Top of the page is north.
* The block is fairly narrow - long sides on the east and west. The width of the house is not much less than the width of the block.
* Views are to the west and south-west.
* Block slopes slightly towards the west. Both east and west neighbours are vacant blocks, eastern side is higher up than us (hence no windows), western side is lower down than us.
* First floor is 2.7m ceilings, ground floor is 2.4m.
* All marked windows are generally floor to ceiling windows.
* The scale may be out of wack, as a guide, the width of the pantry is approx 1m.

Note the "multi-purpose room" is not as originally planned, but we are working on how to spread those 'functions' into the other parts of the house - because everything else is 99% perfect!

Ground floor:

First floor:

We have still found a lot of little things that we could change, but before I list them I'd be interested to see what jumps out to everyone else.. always nice to have fresh opinions!

My Parenting style... why the criticism?

2010-01-29T10:54:00.004+11:00

This may end up being a bit of a rant, for that I am terribly sorry.... but where better to get it out than here ;)
Firstly I would like to get something out there...

I AM A HIPPY

yes, really. I am one of those parents, you know the ones that breastfeed their toddlers, bed share with their children, wears her babies around in slings rather than the sterile old pram, would never leave their precious babies to cry, so it goes on.

Anyone who knew me in my previous (and currently on-hold) life as a medical scientist would probably never believe it, but I just don't give a toss about all the 'rules'. Western cultures seem to be preoccupied with 'training' your babies to be what you want them to be or to be 'good' babies... babies are babies. They aren't capable of being 'bad'.
I am not going to reference anything... anyone who wants to do their own research on anything I will talk about here is more than welcome, but this is about ME and MY opinions... I have researched a lot of this stuff in order to come to my own conclusions and I encourage others to do the same.

So, let me address each of my hippy traits as mentioned above.

First the breastfeeding... well what a hot topic that has been of late. Let me put it this way. Women are given the tools to make the perfect food for their children. If correctly supported there are very few physiological reasons for this system to 'fail'. Most shortened breastfeeding relationships are due to poor advice or little/no support from the wider community. For goodness' sakes, a quarter of Australians think that it is inappropriate to feed a baby in public. If that isn't going to put a whole lot of people off I don't know what is.

Let me make it VERY clear that I do not, nor would I ever put down any mother who has resorted to feeding her baby with breastmilk subsitutes. Every parent makes the best decision that they can with the tools they have available to them.

My problem is that the tools aren't being made available. For me, I don't ever remember seeing breastfeeding as a child. Maybe I can vaguely remember my sister being fed once or twice early on but that's pretty hazy. Really the first exposure I had to breastfeeding was when my niece was born in 2003. My brother and his family live interstate, however, so my exposure was limited.
When my first beautiful child was born in 2007 I assumed that breastfeeding would just work.... wrong! We were both learning! It took 5 whole weeks to get her actually gaining weight but we persevered and I went on to feed her for 14 months and 6 days... 10 long months short of my ultimate goal but still many months longer than I thought possible at the very start. The things that saved my breastfeeding relationship with G were 1. finding the ABA Forum and 2. A wonderful child health nurse who has since retired.
My story is not uncommon, especially for first time mothers who do not have a lot of breastfeeding support around them. So why is it OK for people all around them to say 'oh, just put him/her on the bottle' but if I were to give someone suggestions to help them breastfeed I am labelled all sorts of nasty things.

WHY IS THAT DIFFERENT?

Well, it's not. It's just that bottle feeding has become a lot more acceptable than supporting breastfeeding mums. That to me is very sad.

Bedsharing in this house is a sleep-saver. Little boy currently wakes and feeds often. I am more than happy to meet his needs, but in order that we both get some sleep he bedshares with us after his first wake up of the night. Both Chuq and I are pretty light sleepers, don't smoke, don't take any drugs (prescription or otherwise), if Chuq has had any alcohol he sleeps in another bed, we don't use heavy bedclothes, H is kept well away from the pillows and other bedding and is put to sleep on his back. Why do I even have to justify all of those things.
Chuq was telling me that some people at his work were discussing the tragic accident in Hobart where a 6 month old baby died in a sleep accident whilst bedsharing with her mother... (who was under the influence of substances at the time). In their eyes however it was all about the bedsharing, not the substances involved. If I was getting out of bed to little boy all night I would be ridiculously tired, in fact so much so that driving would be dangerous. In my opinion that would be a far more hazardous situation for him, not to mention anyone else in my car, or anyone on the roads around me, pedestrians and other motorists alike.
SIDS and Kids actually recommend that babies share a room with their parents for the first year of life. How many people put their babies into a cot in their own room from day 1? Lots! I did with G (mind you when it all went to pot when she was 4 months old we started bedsharing).
Guess what? I don't tell the separate room Mummies and Daddies how dangerous their sleep practices are...

SO LEAVE MINE ALONE!

This is getting rather long.. sorry! I should have addressed each hippy trait as a separate entry... however I am nearly to the end now so will keep on going.

Human babies are helpless. Totally helpless. They cannot do anything for themselves... they need their parents for everything. Their only means of communication is crying. Why then are we advised to ignore that communication under the guise of 'sleep training'? Baby could be crying because they are hungry, wet, dirty, in pain, hot, cold, otherwise uncomfortable. If you are certain all these needs are met is it not possible that your baby just needs your reassurance and love?

NO, THEY ARE MANIPULATING YOU, PUT THAT BABY DOWN!

I'm sorry, there is no way that my tiny baby is manipulating me. He is communicating his needs and I am meeting them. Do I tell someone who is letting their child CIO that they are abusing him/her? Sometimes I'd sure like to but I don't. So don't harass me for my choice. I am frequently told what a 'good' baby my 4 month old is, and often at dinners etc. people are surprised at how little he cries. To me there is no sound in the world more heart wrenching than my baby crying so I do all I can to avoid it happening, or if it does to stop it as soon as possible.

To the last of my rants... prams! Prams are a big fat pain in the butt. They don't fit in some shops, through supermarket checkouts or up/down stairs. I have an awesome pram, a Phil&Teds Vibe. It gets used when I'm walking for exercise (little girl is far too slow to walk and little boy would get far too hot being carried) and if I need to keep Miss.2 restrained as I'm out somewhere on my own. Otherwise who can be bothered dragging a huge pram in and out of the car and navigating the obstacle courses that are most shops. I love to have my babies close and they are much more able to engage with their world if they are up where they can see what's going on. G used to cry and cry if I walked her in a pram and eventually I got the message that she wanted to be carried. Again, no she was not manipulating me, she just wanted to be held close and comforted as well as being a little sticky beak needing to be involved in the 'action'.
Thankfully most feedback I get whilst wearing one of my beautiful babies (and yes I do still carry Miss 2 in a sling/carrier occasionally, she is only 11.5kg so not a big ask) is nice... a lovely warm smile from an older lady, a child pointing at the baby, a teenager saying something about how 'cute' it is. I wish that more mums carried their babies in slings though, so that I wasn't somewhat of a spectacle when I do my shopping!

I'm going to leave it there, but my point is that I've learned to ignore all the 'rules' which is funny given that my job before children was one in which you had to follow rules to the letter. However having children has changed my whole perspective on life. I don't sweat the small stuff anymore, I don't worry about things I can't change, instead focusing on things I am able to influence.

Babies are not manipulative, they are helpless and rely on you for everything.

Follow your gut, after all you are the parent, you know your baby.. the writer of your favourite parenting book does not.

Honest Scrap

2010-01-28T23:28:00.004+11:00

So it appears that the lovely Kint has bestowed upon me this award... thus I must share with you 10 truths about me... happy reading :o)

1. Despite the fact that I desperately want it to be tidy, my house is ALWAYS messy. This is not just due to normal kids mess, we also have just so damn much stuff and nowhere to put it. When we move into our new house we are going to have a serious cull. Nothing useless is leaving this house bar to be re-homed with someone else!

2. I nearly started point 2 with the same 3 words I started point 1 with... to re-word for number 3 ;-)

3. Even though in my 'previous life' before children I was pretty much a 'control-freak, stress head' I am a pretty laid back parent. So the small boy doesn't sleep too well... pfft, whatever... he is only 4 months old, he'll sleep eventually :) Yanno, that kind of thing!

4. Even though my youngest baby is only 4.5 months old and doesn't sleep we are talking about #3 already :o) (although the plan is not to be put into action for several months yet)

5. Before G was born I was of the opinion 'I'll give breastfeeding a red hot go, but if it doesn't work out... oh well' This changed the minute she was born... I was going to feed her at all costs. It took us a good 5 weeks to get things going and for her to regain her birthweight but my pig-headedness means that neither of my children have ever ingested a single drop of infant formula.

6. Even though I may project differently, I still need to work on my confidence. These days I can speak to groups, deal with new situations and give my opinion freely however I still get that little niggling voice in my head telling me that I'm not good enough. Even when I knew the answers at school I NEVER put my hand up.

7. I was _so_ well behaved at school it's embarrassing. A slightly pissed off look from a teacher would be enough to elicit tears.

8. It's still pretty easy to make me cry but I'm working on it :o)

9. I'm such a damn nerd.. one year I got a microscope for Christmas as that's what I wanted.

10. It's OK 'cos I married another damn nerd ;)

So, now I pass on the award to some bloggers who inspire me...

Laura - your dedication is inspiring

Phil - you are just awesome and I miss you

There are others but you've already done it :o)

Cloth nappies - the dad's perspective

2010-01-24T23:56:00.000+11:00

Note: Warning to non parents – this post contains descriptions of infants bodily functions!

Before G was born, Emma and I briefly considered using cloth nappies. “Not a chance!” we both said. Folding stupid towels, safety pins, staining, leaks, washing, bleach … as if we’d do that!

When she was a couple of months old, the fact that our wheelie bin was filling up in a week (we have fortnightly collection) thanks to all the disposable nappies was a bit of a nuisance, and was warranting frequent extra trips to the tip. Emma did some more research and found some modern cloth nappies (MCN’s) online. I still wasn’t convinced - “Not a chance!” I said..

Well, Emma bought a small number of this particular brand (about half a dozen) and they were fantastic! They looked just like a disposable nappy – fold them up and stick on the tabs with velcro. No soaking or bleaching needed - throw them in the washing machine and hang them up afterwards, that’s it!

We bought some more and soon enough G was in cloth nappies full time during the day - we still used disposables for overnight though, since they couldn’t absorb the overnight wetting. Emma did buy a few different brands, each of which had their benefits, but nothing perfect. When G moved onto solids it made things interesting, but we bought an attachment that connects to the back of the toilet called a “Little Squirt” – a pressure hose that made cleaning poo off the nappies quick and painless. We were doing about 3 extra loads of washing per week.

We were looking to find a cloth nappy that she could wear overnight and we came across Baby Beehinds – they had a range of MCNs, some of which were hemp or bamboo (which are more absorbent than microfibre, which the other brands used) and some all-in-ones which came in both velcro and press-stud versions. Emma bought a few and finally we had G in cloth nappies full time! As a bonus, the all-in-one’s didn’t leak as the disposables (and other brands) had on occasion.

With H we were well prepared and he has been in MCNs full-time since birth, although when he was born we had to get some newborn sized ones sent down express post. So far he has never worn a disposable nappy in his lifetime! It was quite a busy washing schedule when we had 2 children in full time MCN's and we were often doing a load of nappies every day - but that only lasted a month or two before G was toilet trained during the day (she wears one nappy a day now - at night time). It was still preferable to the alternative - rubbish bags of nappies sitting around because they couldn't fit in our 140L wheelie bin (which was only collected once a fortnight)!

This is for all the dads out there who are point blank refusing to use cloth nappies – it’s not a bad thing! Your wallet is healthier – over 2.5 years you would generally spend about $3000 on disposables, as opposed to $750-$1000 on MCN’s – and you can reuse the MCN’s on the next baby! If you aren’t sure you can always get a small number to use part-time. You are also helping the environment – most of you know that I’m no hippy/greenie (or am I? That’s a whole other blog post in itself!) but considering 1.3 billion disposable nappies go to landfill each year in Australia … well I guess we are only reducing that by 2000 per child per year, but every little bit helps.

Emma was always promoting the benefits of MCN’s to her fellow mums and mums-to-be, she frequently mentioned that the mum would be interested but the dad would veto it – on the grounds of either capital outlay or time and effort spent washing them. On the cost, just buy a small number (half dozen) to start with. On the cleaning.. well, this will come out unintentionally sexist no matter which way I say it, but … let her buy them on the condition that if you don't like them, you don't have to take on any of the additional washing. I'm pretty sure that after using them for a while you will realise it is no big deal, and help out ... give them a go, you will surprise yourself – we did!

Impartiality disclaimer: Emma has been a Baby Beehinds reseller/demonstrator for the Hobart area since June last year. She had been promoting MCN’s for free for a while so it seemed like the role was meant for her!

A bit about Linux

2010-01-20T23:40:00.002+11:00

Linux.conf.au 2010, the largest grass-roots Linux conference in the Asia-Pacific, is currently underway in Wellington, New Zealand. My first experience with LCA was last year at the 2009 conference, hosted at the University of Tasmania in Hobart.

Since there are quite a few non-technical people following this blog, I’ll give a bit of a beginners guide.   Linux is an alternate operating system - in other words it replaces Windows on a PC. Rather than being written by employees of private companies, It is contributed to by volunteers from all over the world and is available to copy, download and use for free. It is open source software (OSS), meaning that the more technically inclined can modify the code – the license allows this on the condition that changes are released back to the community. As a result of this there are many variations of Linux (known as distributions – Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, etc). One of the more popular distributions is the one that I use - Ubuntu.

Linux.conf.au is an annual conference first held in 1999 (under the name of ‘Conference of Australian Linux Users’) as a gathering for members of the Linux community across Australia to meet up, educate each other, network and have some fun!

So far as the Linux side of things go, I’m not a programmer, database administrator or system administrator so I never really thought I’d get a lot out of it, or most of it would be over my head. Along with the fact that my employment has been based on the Windows side of things so I’d be paying for flights, accommodation and conference registration myself, I’d never really considered attending. When it was announced that Linux.conf.au 2009 would be hosted in Hobart, I thought I’d make the most of it and offer to volunteer!

One of my volunteer roles was filming some of the sessions, and since the sessions were generally chosen for me, I got to see a wide range of sessions that I generally wouldn’t have chosen. They were wide ranging, from the SAMBA team detailing their experiences working together with Microsoft, to Pia Waugh talking about the OLPC XO-1 laptop designed for schools in developing countries, to a Linux powered clarinet.   One of the highlights was Jon Oxer and Jared "Flame" Herbohn’s "Geek my Ride" presentation, including the geeking up of their RX-8 and 300ZX respectively.

I also enjoyed meeting up with some fellow Wikimedia Australia members, including Brianna, Liam, Angela and Tim! Angela was one of the keynote speakers and Brianna ran the "Free As In Freedom" mini-conference (which explored issues relating to other free cultural works, not just free software).

And the charity auction at the conference dinner would need an entire blog post to explain – in fact, someone else has already done it for me!

On the day before the conference I met Andrew and Susanne, as well as their 1 year old daughter B, who had come over from Wellington. We had a bit of a chat and got on well. B and G had fun at the Open Day playing on the XO-1 laptops – geeks in training!

On the final day it was announced that Wellington was the host of LCA 2010 and they were the head organisers! From that day I had plans to go to LCA 2010 but sadly due to costs and family commitments it didn’t eventuate. I tried to get my work to pay for me to go, but the fact I deal pretty much exclusively with Windows at work didn’t help. I offered to pay flights/accommodation myself if work would pay for the conference ticket, but there are all sorts of legal cost-splitting issues involved with international travel so it didn’t eventuate.    It would have been good to have seen Andrew and Susanne again, especially as we now both have sons around the same age as well!

As they say, there’s always next year!

New Beds!

2010-01-17T11:07:00.003+11:00

A word of warning... if you can, avoid taking a 2 year old into a bed shop!
Yesterday we went shopping as a family to look for two new beds... our Queen sized bed just doesn't cut it for those times when there are 4 in the bed. In fact, even when there are only 3 of us (which is every night after Hamish wakes for the first time) our pillows migrate partially onto the bedside tables in order to make a safe space around H with no pillows or doona. We went along with two major requirements for a king sized bed.. reasonably low to the ground without any hazardous bits of bed frame sticking out to bang little heads on and drawers underneath. Guess what was looking at us when we walked in the door? We did do a lap of all of the big beds in the shop but none were as nice or as reasonably priced as the first nor met our requirements! Sold!

The second bed we were looking for was a king single for G. We wanted a king single for the times that one of us needs to hop in with her, or the times that our kids may want to hop in with each other in the night. This one just needed to be a nice looking frame and reasonably low to the ground. We found one fairly easily and without too much bed jumping by G. She did have a good play with the toys on the kids' beds which was fine.
The fun started when we had to pick mattresses... if Daddy was hopping on the beds, it was obviously fine for her too. The salesman appeared quite enamoured with her and she took an instant liking to him, running around and waving to him whilst cheekily jumping on beds (yelling 'no more monkeys hopping on the bed') and running through the store. The salesman was infinitely patient whilst one of us ran after her, even getting her a balloon and some stickers whilst I was looking at linen (of course we only have linen for single and queen beds). He did mention that he was expecting his first child in June so I guess he was thinking about what he had to look forward to.

Eventually we were able to make some decisions and handed over the credit card after he had knocked the price down a bit for buying two full beds and some linen and as we were about to leave he presented Miss G with a stuffed lion from one of the bed displays. Top Bloke :D (or just good salesman, but he seemed lovely)
So now, the cleanup begins. G's room is simple, move current bed out, put new bed in. Ours is somewhat more complicated... it has become something of a dumping ground for 'mess' from other rooms when we need to quickly 'tidy', so it will probably take us all week to get everything out and sorted, but there is nothing like a bit of pressure to make you tidy things up. Hopefully we won't just 'relocate' too much of it!

We have a floor plan!

2010-01-14T23:16:00.001+11:00

... well, a first draft one at least - we met up with our architect today to see what initial design he had come up with, and we have not been disappointed!

One of the first things he mentioned was that due to the northern edge of the block being a reasonably short boundary, it would make it difficult to get lots of natural light into the house. The solution? An internal courtyard/deck area! The logic behind it being that the courtyard would give us another north facing surface which could let more natural light into the house. In fact, even with one entire side of our house having no windows (the side facing the neighbouring block which is uphill from us), every single room in the house has a floor to ceiling window in it somewhere. (Barring the garage/home theatre, which are cut into the block on the lower level.)

We were amazed that basically after only being given a list of rooms, we have more or less got a plan we love on the first go! In fact Emma and I had mentioned in the past how cool it would be to have a house with an internal courtyard .. and we hadn't even mentioned it to our architect.

I won't reproduce the plans here as I haven't checked that this is ok - but the general flow of the layout is great - the main level (first floor) goes (in a clockwise direction) children's bedrooms and bathroom; office/music room; living/dining areas, kitchen; and master bedroom/ensuite. The ground floor houses the garage, home theatre, guest room/ensuite and laundry. The centre courtyard extends through both levels. There are also four decks; entry way and drying area on the ground level, and courtyard and rear on the top level.

Sadly we are still in "cost cutting" mode - narrowing the house by 1 metre in both directions could save us about $80,000. But will we regret it later? It's not entirely practical to add that metre back later on when we can afford it, and room size is one of the reasons we want to move in the first place. We might have to do what we did with the current house, which is leave some rooms unfinished.

We will be spending the next week or two "virtually" living in the floor plan and doing some nitpicking before meeting up with the architect again!

My Daughter, The Fruit Bat

2010-01-10T18:39:00.003+11:00

Well I can safely say that she will never be deficient in vitamin C! G would fight you to the death for a plate of grapes... She would be ecstatic if fruit was the only food she was allowed to eat. She can name every fruit in the supermarket except for some of the odd exotics and the only fruit I can think of off the top of my head that she doesn't like are mangoes... however next year she will probably love them!
We currently have a bag of plums and apricots in the bottom of the fridge that came from Mum & Dad's fruit trees (lucky as apricots cost a fortune!) and she is now tall enough to help herself... not sure how good this really is but at least she is toilet trained during the day so she's not going to be getting a red bum from sitting in fruit poo (sorry to all you non-parents but as you know, we parents can't have a conversation without mentioning poo).
We are also growing strawberries in pots on our back deck and one of the highlights of her day is checking to see if any are ready yet so that she can eat them (after she has helped to water them).
So, sitting in the highchair this evening after scraping most of the vegetables off her pizza and eating the base I give her a handful of blueberries and an apricot, she asks for a plum as well and I oblige. She then goes on to tell me that the blueberries are her friends.... ok then. At least they don't cry when you bite them, take your toys or compete with you for the attention of others.

The new house - the story so far!

2010-01-09T00:15:00.001+11:00

Our building adventure (well, the second one) is only just starting - so I thought I would post a summary of where we are now, before things really get started!

A little history - our current house was also a build. We purchased a house and land package in 2001. Never again! A house and land package always feels like you are building someone elses design, not something for yourself. We did make several changes of course - I think everyone who builds does - but there were so many things that as young, first time builders, you just don't pick up.

In October 2009 we bought a 1006 sq m block of land in Lenah Valley. We love the location - very close to my work and the kids' future school (20 minutes walk / 2-3 minutes drive), about 10 minutes from the city and 10 minutes from Emma's parents. It's at the end of a cul-de-sac, has great views of the mountain, and if we place the house correctly will have water views as well. It gets a lot of sun as well.

We've been planning the house for a while (well, I have), but when we spoke to our architect in November we still weren't 100% sure of what we wanted.. one thing is for sure, if we got all that we wanted it would be costing us more than we could afford!

Our original plan was for a 5 1/2 bedroom house with large open plan living area, two studies, separate multi-purpose room, home theatre ... our rationale for the number of bedrooms was a master bedroom, three childrens rooms, and the other 1/2 was actually a guest room that was bigger than your average room and could sleep 4-5 people. The two studies were a "his" study, which was were all my computer gear was located, and "hers" which was a combined music teaching room, sewing room and storage for Emma's business.

Needless to say reality has kicked in and consolidation has occurred! We aren't budging on the multi-purpose room though. The room will be accessible from the living area and viewable from there as well, due to a series of internal windows. It will also be mostly soundproof. The intention is that it can be used as a children's play area, a quiet reading room, a homework room (children's computers will be in there) or a music practise area.

The house will be built to passive solar design principles, to make the most of the large amounts of sun that the block gets. The plan is also to have solar hot water, photovoltaic solar cells, and varies other eco-sustainable thingies.

Our current house has very much been a work in progress most of the time we have been here - to start with, we had no floor coverings, no decks, no concrete driveway, no fences (the three blocks around us were vacant), no gates, and in about 1/4 of the house, no plasterboard walls! The idea was to build a "finished" house this time, but it might not happen - but we've decided we are not skipping the floor coverings this time!

The intention is to start building in maybe a year, and be in the house a year after that. Fingers crossed!

Local perceptions of Tassie's A-League bid

2010-01-06T15:26:00.000+11:00

It's time for my first post on another one of our blogs main topics - balls, specifically of the foot variety!

Yesterday, Tassie A-League bid taskforce Tasmania United FC made a press release announcing the next stage of their bid process - a public sentiment survey.

And of course, the same thing happened that happens everytime.. the naysayers come out of the woodwork.

One anonymous poster on Walter Pless' site posted "We have at least two chances of getting an A league side here in Tasmania. Buckleys and none." I would like to think that Buckley - FFA CEO Ben Buckley that is - who grew up in Tasmania, would like to see a team here!

This is on a site specifically about Tasmanian football - you would expect them to be the most supportive.

"Zero chance of an A league team here. All clubs struggling. No money in the game. That is reality.", the anonymous poster continued.

I continued with some actual facts:

* Yes some clubs are struggling. Importantly, some are not. Financially, Melb and Central Coast are in the black. Crowd wise, some are down, but Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Wellington are up.

* The feasibility study includes financial info and a preliminary public interest survey. It also states that TUFC will be able to break even with crowds as low as 8000 due to the favourable stadium arrangements in place.

* FFA is about to sign a new deal with Fox Sports for $60m/year (current deal is $17m/year).

* Buckley, Frank Lowy and Archie Fraser have all recently stated Canberra and Tasmania are their intentions for future expansion.

I don't understand the mentality of not supporting a team playing your preferred sport, in your own state. Do people think they are going to get punished for supporting an unsuccessful bid? The general public don't need to worry about the funding or sponsors or business cases or anything like that - if the bid doesn't have them, they won't be accepted. The only question most of us have to answer is "If we get a team, will you support them?" You would expect Tasmanians, being a parochial bunch, to do so!

I think many Tasmanians have a built-in inferiority complex - they have been told that they are not good enough by mainlanders for so long that they start to believe it.

Support makes a huge amount of difference. Look at Gold Coast United. Ignoring the crowds they had everything that makes a hugely successful club. Jason Culina, a World Cup Socceroo playing in Europe, returning in play in Australia in the prime of his career. A strong squad including leading goalscorer Shane Smeltz. Clive Palmer, Queenslands richest man, as their owner. Good results, consistently in the top 3 of the league all season. Robina Stadium, a 27,000 capacity stadium completed in 2005, to play in. The only major sport on the Gold Coast over summer (not even cricket to contend with). But their crowds are terrible, smaller than clubs based in less populated areas such as Central Coast and Townsville.

They have not promoted themselves or connected with the community, and as a result they have the smallest crowds of any club, and that alone has caused all sorts of problems, on and off the field.

Hopefully as club based in a smaller population area, this will be one of the things that Tasmania United FC will do well. Time will tell!

Charles and Emma - 2000-2009

2010-01-05T21:56:00.001+11:00

It has become popular these days for people to send an 'end of year' letter with their Christmas cards to friends and family. It's an easy way of keeping people up to date, especially those who you don't keep in regular contact with. As many of you know, we don't do Christmas cards! Seeing as it is the end of the 2000s decade, I figure why not do an 'end of decade' update of what we have done over the last 10 years?

First to set the scene - on 1 January 2000, we were living in a rental property in Launceston with Matt and Geoff, Emma was studying Bio-medical Science at the University of Tasmania and working part time. Charles was working two part time IT related jobs. Emma had a 1976 Ford Escort and Charles a 1992 Toyota Camry.

In the middle of the year, we moved into our own flat in Summerhill. We stayed here for 2 years, which was a record - the 3 years previous Emma had lived in about 8 different rentals!

September 2000 was (as well as the Sydney Olympics) our engagement party! It was held at the community hall just opposite our unit.

In December, Emma graduated from Uni with a Bachelor of Biomedical Science! In April 2001 she was successful in gaining a fulltime scientists position in Hobart. This meant that almost every weekend over the next year, one of us travelled the return trip from Launceston to Hobart. Combined with Charles' work at regional schools (Perth, Bracknell, Deloraine, Mole Creek, Meander, etc) this resulted in a lot of km's being clocked in that year!

Due to Emma's new job we had decided to move to Hobart. In the second half of 2001 we bought a house and land package in a new Glenorchy subdivision just around the corner from Emma's parents - construction started in October!

2002 was a year of big changes for us. In April we moved into our new house - although with plenty of work to do! October 12 was the big day - we got married, at Moorilla Estate, including the reception in the Museum of Antiquities. Many thanks to Matt Springer, Matt Grey, Alister, James, Laura, Hayley, Rachel, Erin and Jess for being a part of this fantastic day with us!

In the same month Charles started a new job (in a contractors role) in Hobart. A welcome relief after being unemployed since moving from Launceston!

In 2003 we adopted our border collie cross puppies Jenna and Bridie from a farm in Judbury.

In February 2004 we did a ferry/drive holiday to Melbourne and Adelaide in our (then new) Subaru Impreza. It included a visit to Emma's brother and sister-in-law Mark and Rachel in Melbourne, including seeing our new niece (born in 2003)! During the drive to Adelaide (via Ararat/Horsham) the temperature reading in the car maxxed out at 48 degrees.. I was glad we had air-conditioning!

Summer 2004/05 was the season of weddings for us. It included Laura (Emma's sister) and Ben's wedding in January, and we were honoured to both be in the wedding party for our good friends Iain and Tracey in February!

During 2005 Emma was promoted to a senior role at her work, and Charles moved from a contractor to full-time employee. The latter half of the year we were finally able to get the majority of the external work at our house completed! What started as a retaining wall required for structural reasons, became a retaining wall, front deck and concreted driveway.

In 2006 we did another large interstate trip. First a few days in Melbourne with Mark and family (now including a new nephew), which included a trip to the MCG with 95,000 others to farewell the Socceroos before they left for Germany! That was followed by a few days on the Gold Coast, and a week in Gladstone, staying with Emma's aunt Pam and cousin Chelle. The final part of the trip was our long awaited honeymoon - a weekend on Heron Island, and it was fantastic!

2007 was again, a big year of changes for us! The biggest of course was the birth of our little girl 'G' in October. As if we weren't busy enough, we had the privilege of both being in the wedding party for Matt and Mel in September - fortunately G didn't arrive early! Charles started a new job in the electricity industry in November - co-incidentally the same place he had been contracted to through his previous employer for the last 4 years!

G must have had a bigger effect on our lives than we thought because in writing this summary I couldn't think of anything notable that we did in 2008. Perhaps both of us turning 30 made us a bit forgetful in our old age?

2009 was another big one. In Easter 2009 the three of us, along with Mel and Lachie, travelled to Sydney for the National Band Championships, where Emma and Mel's band placed first overall in both open A grade concert and open B grade brass. In June, Emma also started a second "career" - as the Hobart consultant/reseller for modern cloth nappy brand Baby Beehinds. September heralded the arrival of #1 son, H - he couldn't have stressed us out too much, as Charles found time in the weeks following to fly up to Bribie Island, to visit his aunt Heather and family and to celebrate his Grandma's 100th birthday!

As if that wasn't enough, we have just bought a block of land in Lenah Valley. That should give some hint as to what the next decade will bring :)

Tempestuous Twos

2010-01-03T21:09:00.004+11:00

We have had a lovely family day today... took the kids out to lunch at the Taste of Tasmania, G had a run around at the park on the way home. She is just the most beautiful child, smothers her 4 month old brother with love and affection... and then out of the blue she will pinch or slap him. She is usually a pretty good eater but refuses meat. Then one day (like today) she will pick all the chicken off a piece of pizza... to EAT it! She doesn't like to sleep during the day, but this afternoon on the way home she asked if she could go to sleep. When met with 'no darling, it's too late... when we get home we will eat tea and then you can go to sleep' tears followed. Toddlers are contradictions and extreme ends of the spectrum. One moment they will be adoring little angels, the next moment you just want to step aside and imagine that this raging devil couldn't possibly be your offspring. I put it down to the fact that they are learning... everything. They are totally egocentric and don't understand that the world isn't in existence to cater to their every whim... immediately! I am certain that she isn't malicious in hurting her brother, but rather wants to know what he will do if she pinches him. I recently read a quote on a forum which went something along the lines of 'you're not managing an inconvenience, you're raising a human being'. I wish I knew where it came from, maybe someone could enlighten me but I remind myself of that several times a day when she's doing something for the seventeenth time that I've asked her not to.

2010-01-02T23:42:00.002+11:00

Well... here we are again! Do you think we can actually maintain our blog this time? I guess only time will tell. As for the updated name, I'll be posting on brass and babies mainly... will leave the balls and broadband for Charlie. I guess as things start happening with our new house both of us will post on the building side of things!