The anti-cleanfeed protest

Next Monday two colleagues and I will have a presentation of what we have achieved so far for them in the current project. Depending on this they will pay a certain amount of money. There's still a fair bit to do though due to unforeseen circumstances (= hardly any documentation because the client never wanted to pay for that) so I went in for a few hours today to do some administration and a bit of coding. Just a few little things that will make my life easier this Monday.

Nicole dropped me off and went shopping for Christmas cards. She returned with Christmas cards and... a new bag. I don't think men will ever understand this fascination for bags.

Then we went down to the food court for lunch. We got some Thai food. This time I asked for extra sauce which made it a lot nicer than last time.

After lunch, we walked over to parliament house for the protest. We passed this big building.

At parliament house we joined a protest against the plans of the Australian Government to implement a mandatory internet filter at all Australian ISPs. Unfortunately we just missed the speaker which must've been right at the start while we were still having lunch. We still joined for a good two hours.

Afterwards we walked back to Rundle street over North terrace. These funny stones are actually fountains. Very nicely done.

Different styles of architecture.

Modern?

We had coffee and cake at Chocolat, in Rundle street.

Cake and Nicole, Nicole and cake. It was very nice but by then I was getting really exhausted. I just didn't have enough sleep this week and work isn't helping. I'm not feeling too good at the moment.

I played two games of poker in the evening. I won the second game which delivered me a whopping $4.50!

The Christmas tree

Work, work and more work. So much work I lunched at the office and returned back to work as soon as I could. I'm going to work a few hours tomorrow (Saturday) as well.

The weather was crap anyway.

At least the chair I sat in was comfortable and I like looking outside.

The Christmas tree looks beautiful. Actually more beautiful than I've ever seen it.

Shit sleep

Nicole and I are pretty wrecked today. When we came home from the bowls last night, little boy Mason was so excited to see us that he pissed all over the veranda. I had not seen that before. Actually he was so excited that he stayed awake all night and decided to wake us up at 2:30 AM and at 5:00 AM. No, it was not a good night.

Lunch was better. To stay awake I went as soon as I could. It was sunny and warm. I stayed out a bit longer. At that time I didn't know I was going to stay at work more than two hours longer...

By the time Nicole was picking me up (she had to leave later as well, naturally) it had started raining the most delightful of rains. It's still going. It's coming straight down, there's hardly any wind. Pretty big, soft drops that make such a nice sound. I feel like falling asleep now.

The bird bowl

I got some Thai for lunch but it wasn't great. Mainly because it was too dry. I have to ask for plenty of sauce next time.

I sat next to the church again and the terrace opposite had doubled. I felt like I was sitting on their terrace too.

I always arrive at the bowls pretty early to eat my sandwich. There's not many people there then.

One of the ladies of tonight's opponents bowled with a bird-bowl. All bowls have a little emblem and some are very nice. I want to photograph them but my camera is too shit. When is Apple going to make a 5 mega pixel iPhone?

Half time is tea time and raffle time and bull shit time.

We had a good game tonight and the other team was fun. Sometimes when you can't decide which bowl is closer, you get the measure tape.

Being number three I have to skip the captain when he's bowling. It's very frustrating if the person you're giving directions just does whatever he/she wants anyway AND rolls a very bad bowl...

Extra: Unfortunate graphics

I was running some speed tests on our ADSL line tonight. You can choose your server and I choose Perth. The result is a little man who seems to be peeing on Perth... Worth a laugh I think. I should've chosen Melbourne *grin*

Anyway, the speed appeared to be around 6.5 Mb/sec. Sounds alright but I have no idea how that compared to the rest of the world really.

8

We woke up very early so I had time to watch another Family Guy episode. Stewie and Brian travelled around the world and also visited a Dutch "coffee shop".

I arrived at work at 7:55. Not funny.

During lunch I sat down next to the church again. I started off in complete shadow. The sun was HOT.

Lately the lunch place has been putting tables outside of their premises. It makes the street look a bit nicer I think.

Sky above me.

Someone in my street was making toasties again. At least the firies were getting a bit of exercise.

The soup-nazi is now replaced by a massage salon. No happy ending. I rather have soup then...

After work I walked to Nicole. It started raining. Not too bad though and it was over soon.

For dinner I did another frozen meal experiment. This is what it looks like on the packet. Not bad huh?

And this is how it comes out of the microwave. I guess the colour of the sauce is pretty close. The veggies shrunk a bit. I think I tasted fish. I definitely tasted mustard. The veggies tasted kind of all the same. I guess you can't eat restaurant quality food every day. I need to learn how to make that bruschetta stuff here at home.

Today Nicole and I have been together for eight years. Seven in The NL and one here in Adelaide. We have had a lot of adventures together. Never a boring day. And never a fight. Yes, that's right, NEVER. People who think that fights belong in relationships are stupid.

This photo was taken during our first holiday in Adelaide in 2001. To me, it says it all, this is us. I can't imagine a life without her anymore :-)

A new spot for lunch

As we were leaving to work I quickly made a photo of these two little doves. They are about 1.5 months now I reckon. One of them was born somewhere else and seems to have taken the place of one that actually was born here. We have no idea where the other one is.

For lunch I walked to Victoria square again but all the benches with shade were taken apart from one that was just occupied by pigeons. I chased them off and sat there for two minutes but they kept walking and flying close to me. So I went and sat under a tree in the park.

It was actually much nicer under the tree on the grass.

You see that bench? That's where I sit sometimes unless it's too hot.

After work we went to PJ's. Because everybody decided to order at the same time it took very long for our food to come out. The nice barman came out and brought us free drinks worth $13 though.

Walking back to our little car we saw this tank. I mean, seriously...

This is the park inside the city opposite PJ's.

"Krafty"

The experiments

I studied all morning into the early afternoon. After this it was time for some excitement so I was going to conduct some experiments. First I wanted to test the little water pump I bought yesterday to find out how much power it needs to be useful. When attached to a 4 V power source it takes a current of 72 mA. This means it consumes 0.3 W and it will just do what I want it to do: pump water about 20 cm upwards. The smallest solar panel I could find actually produces 1 W of power so this pump will definitely rock. I will actually have to restrict power generated by the solar panel. Maybe I can use it for something else as well. Hmm...

Then it was time for lunch. I watched another Family guy episode. I love this cartoon, it's so funny.

I have some tiny solar panels left that I bought about 20 years ago. I took them into the garden to find out their power. Now these are very old cells so nothing spectacular came out of it: 0.47 V with a maximum current of 2 mA. Awesome, not :-)

In the late afternoon we went to Largs jetty to get some Fish and chips. We hadn't been there for ages. I also had a "Dutch croquette roll" also known as "Broodje kroket". The previous owner used to be Dutch and they kept the things he introduced. So if you order a cappuccino, you get a "speculaas" biscuit (apparently people do not say "cookie" here) with it.

Where I was throwing chips to the seagulls or hand feeding them, Nicole has more class and used a fork. Very funny.

We walked up the jetty where it was VERY windy.

The white stripes are sand being blown over the beach.

I wrote another letter about the Government's "Clean feed" internet censoring plans to my member for parliament Kate Ellis. At the least they are spending your tax money on something that's 100% useless and doomed to fail (and they should know!) and at the most they will censor and cripple your internet access. If you live in Australia and you have not taken any action against these plans, well, you obviously don't care about your rights and don't mind being stripped of some...