beeping cars

No that is not my attempt at swearing I am talking about cars that actually beep.

I know this blog has gone a bit automotive but what do you expect from me :P

I would love to know what you guys think but I personally cant stand the trend with cars beeping.

You leave the lights on and turn the ignition off - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You leave the keys in the ignition and open the door - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You arm the alarm - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You disarm the arlarm - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You start the engine without your seatbelt on - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You go over 110km/h - BEEP BEEP BEEP

You change radio station - BEEP BEEP BEEP (even my car does this)

SHUT UP!!!!

If you are worried that I am leaving my lights turned on then why not TURN THEM OFF FOR ME?? (both my parents cars do this). One of the stupidest things I have seen is a Mercedes van that beeps if you leave the headlights on but you can leave the highbeams on by pushing the stick forward WITHOUT the lowbeams on and the highbeams will stay on (unlike a toyota where the lowbeams have to be on first) AND the car wont beep if you leave the highbeams on! Who would be that stupid? The guy I used to work with did it twice!

If I am arming/disarming the alarm why not do something more subtle like flash the hazard lights (mums car) or the parking lights (dads car). Another neat trick is to turn the interior light on when it is disarmed and turn it off if it is armed (when it stays on for 1 min after the doors close unless the engine is running) (dad's car does all this and it works well).

If I go over 110km/h that is my decision, live with it. (300ZX's beep over 110km/h).

And finally if anyone is stupid enough to drive off with out their seatbelt on then they get what they deserve. It is like wearing a helmet on a bike, you shouldnt need to be reminded. If you do want to beep why not only do it if the car is moving at more than say 10km/h. There are times when you are doing something and want to move the car slowly and be able to get in and out eg. parking a trailer in a tight spot.

The thing I dont get is cars beep for all this but dont beep if the driver really is doing something stupid like driving with no oil in the engine.

Any other things that annoy the crap out of you with cars? (other than me talking about them all the time :P

Have fun.

p.s. no blogs for a few days I am going CAMPING!!!! HELL YEAH!!!

merging

No I am not talking about source control you geeks! I figured while I am on the topic of driving I would tackle another issue that gives me the shits.

I am talking about people that drive up on ramps at 20km/h until they see a gap a mile long and then gun it. Whats my problem with this? Gunning it in my truck doesnt get you very far. For me to get on a highway in a safe manor I need a run up.

The thing I dont understand is why these people make it harder for themselves. If you think about it the slower you drive up an on ramp the faster the cars (and therefore the gaps) come from BEHIND YOU! Yes that is right the slower you go the harder it is to see them. On the other hand come up an on ramp at 110km/h and the gaps are infront of you and you can adjust your speed a little and just slot in.

Another thing that shits me no end is when you come up an on ramp and for some reason everyone happens to be obeying the "keep left unless overtaking" rule for a change and the right lane is empty but noone moves across to let you in.

And while we are on the "keep left unless overtaking" rule. This doesnt mean that its ok to sit in the right lane provided you are next to another car. THAT IS NOT OVERTAKING! Overtaking is actively driving past another vehicle. Can you either get past and get over or slow down and get in the left lane behind them. It makes life so much easier for others. Sure there are times when this isnt practicle due to heavy traffic but I have had many occasions where there has been me and two other cars on the road and you can guess where the two cars like to be.

And I wont even start on tailgating. We all know what is going to happen if you hit the back of my car.

That is enough ranting for now.

Have fun.

p.s. how goes the spider solitaire challenge people? I have only heard results from Emma (on easy too!)

parking

In a world obsessed with cars parking is important. You have to put the things somewhere when your not using them. If you travel through europe you notice they park very effectively and waiste very little space. Here on the other hand people waiste miles.

It amazes me how lazy some people are. The other day riding out of uni i saw someone trying to reverse park and getting it kinda wrong... ok. I am not going to complain about their lack of ability but they were parking behind a car that had about 10 empty spaces infront of it. If you dont want to walk the extra 10m's then learn to park. The only logical reason I can see for these people doing this was to practice reverse parking.

Another amusing thing to watch is people trying to park in the angle parking on the various campuses. These things arent the hardest places to park. Even Andrea finds them easy to reverse into. All you have to do if you are not confident is find another car and line up on the side of it and reverse next to it... easy. The number of people I have watched taking 5 minutes to get into one of these parking spots.

My rule in judging people generally boils down to if they are driving a little hatch with a tiny turning circle and good visibility and they cant park somewhere that i could park my truck then they might need a little work.

Lets not even start on the price of parking on Griffith campuses.

I realise that Andrea says that she can't park a car but I know the truth is that she can. She might not be able to see where she is going when she reverses but that doesnt stop her. :P Besides she is sensible enough to realise that if she doesnt like squeezing into certain spots all she has to do is park somewhere easy and walk a little further.

What inspired all this? Well I just got out of the car and noticed that despite not driving my parents cars very often I still know how to park the suckers. These are photos of the front of mum and dads cars next to the camping trailer.



What can I say, old habits die hard.

Have fun.

next year

I was having a little chat to Nee yesterday on my way home (she was taking Elli for a walk) and I said something that I should put up here for the rest of you.

I believe that next year will be the most challenging and exciting year of my life. There are three massive things I plan to do which I have never done before:

Move out of home

Thats right... its about freakin time. This should be fun and interesting. For those of you who think I am totally defensless you might like to know that I already do the majority of my own washing and I love cooking when I am allowed in the kitchen.

I will survive. I might live a little 'rough' for a while since unlike some people (Tim) my parents havent gone out and bought me everything under the sun as a hint for me to move out. This of course wont be a problem. I have my camping gear. Anyone who has been camping with me knows that I therefore have everything I will need other than maybe a fridge (need somewhere for the beer that doesnt involve a million bags of ice).

Get a 'real' job

I didnt go to the university for the real world so I might strugle here. I should point out just how much I loved working at Arriva, I do consider it a real job in some sense but what I am talking about here is an IT job.

I hope to get a job that is 'normal' working hours where I can come home on a friday arvo and forget about it until monday morning. That will mean weekends for the first time since high school :P I mean real weekends with nothing hanging over my head

and last but definately not least

Maintain a serious relationship

This will be hard and easy. Hard because I tend to stuff these things up. But I will admit the stuff ups in the past have mainly been choosing the wrong girls to start with.

Sooo the easy part?

Andrea makes everything soo worthwhile and appreciates everything that I do for her that I find it very VERY easy to care and do the right things. I cannot put into words how great she is. I hope this feeling never ends and going by how things are going thus far there is a good chance it never will.

So now all I have to do is finish this year and ride 6000km or so around New Zealand.....find a job, find a place to live, be romantic, etc......... easy as bro.

Have fun.

a link should be a link

Well I am waiting for a tute to start in 45mins and haven't got any work here so I figured I better write something. Well actually I went to play "Like Your Style" that adz wrote but then his link to it reminded me of something I don't like.

The thing that I dont like is when a webdeveloper decides how I should open a link. For example in hotmail all links are actually javascript that opens a new window, if you try to right click and open it in a new tab it doesnt load. Hotmail is the worst offender but websites in general try to tell you when you should be opening a new window/tab. I would rather make the decision myself. But maybe I am so willing to make the decision because I have a decent browser where it is just as easy to open a new tab as clicking on the link in the first place.

Thats just my view of matters I am sure the web developers out there are dying to give me an earful of why links should open in new windows etc...

Have fun.

spider solitare challenge

I have been sick and have too many assignments to do to write a meaningful post.... I will get back into it soon I promise.

In the mean time I hereby challenge you to see how well you can do in Microsofts spider solitare.

The challenges:

highest score

highest win percentage (after > 20 games)

best winning streak

highest total number of games won

And just for the record I do mean on the hard setting! Feel free to post your scores on the other settings but lets face it they aren't exactly challenging.

As an IT student you would expect me to have better games to play but you would not believe how often convinience wins. I hereby set the bench mark at:

1074 points

23%

4 wins

48 games won

I will keep you up to date as to who the current leader of each category is.

Yes I am really REALLY good at avoiding the assignments that I am meant to be doing.

Have fun.

Italia

Well today is the day my parents leave for Italy.

Party time I hear you all shouting.... well NO. Assignment time unfortunately.

With any luck they might send a few photos home and I can put them up here for you to all check out.

I promise my blogs will get more interesting again on day.

Have fun.

favourite music

Since nothing is happening in my life today I thought I would ask you all a question instead.

Basically I want to know what your favourite music is and why.

It doesnt have to be a single song, it can be an artist, a certain cd or whatever.

For instance you might love the lyrics of Lazy Boy's:"Underwear Goes Inside The Pants" or you might like a bit of "Enter Sandman" while you are driving or maybe you can't get the idea of being a punk rocker out of your head.

I am a bit old school in that I like: Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd... etc. But I also like some newer stuff too. I am not a huge fan of Hip Hop or classical or anyone who has no talent other than having a hot body (I can't see you on my radio so whats the point, if you dont have talent SHUT UP).

I would also be interested in who you think are the best artists of all time (living or dead). Who do you think has shaped the world of music the most? Is it Freddie Mercury? Bob Marley? Jimmi Hendrix? Eric Clapton?.....

Who would you most like to see play? Who would you most like to meet?

I know this is a cope out of a blog entry but oh well I have other things to be working on and i would love to hear about what you guys like. Maybe I will listen to some of it and get a little more up to date in my tastes.

Have fun.

assignments galore

Sorry if you came here to read something interesting. I have a fair bit of work that I am trying to get done before my week off.

Whats happening in the world of Ed?

Today is Charlie's (my younger brother) 16th birthday.

My parents fly to Italy on Saturday.

Other than that life just ticks on.

Here are a few more happy snaps.



Have fun.

too busy to play

Unfortunately I have recently been a little bit busy. Too busy to play with my new camera enough :(

I was hoping that todays blog might include some cool pictures from my spanking new Powershot A640 but alas I can't be bothered adding the img tags into the post.

You can of course click on that link on the top right there that will take you to my flickr page with the photos that I have uploaded already. If you want to see the full quality images just ask and I can send them to you (if you want all of them it will have to be burnt onto a DVD).

Sorry there is no more exciting news but assignments take priority when you are in your last semester of uni :P

Have fun.

Magpies

Thats right its spring again...

For anyone that walks anywhere magpies can be a pain. For people that commute on their bikes magpies are even worse.

The best way of atracting magpies is without a doubt having a helmet that is roughly magpie colours like mine. I have seen a magpie chasing another cyclist and give up turn around and chase me instead. They hate my helmet.... grrr

It is good for my fitness though beause you basically have only one option: outrun the bastards. This is easier said then done when you have traffic lights, pedestrians or hills.

Feel free to post your magpie stories as comments.

I have a test to study for :(

Have fun.

two months!

Can you believe that Andrea has put up with me for two whole months!!!

I know I can't.

Before I get in trouble it was two months on friday but with my camera and other things going on I have been too distracted to write this entry.

I would like to keep this brief by saying that I love her and I hope this lasts forever because I have never been happier. Andrea is certainly a very special person who I will cherish forever. She makes me feel truely special and I hope she knows that I think she is truely special too.

Thanks for everything babe.

Of course today (the 10th) is two months since I wrote my first blog. Yes it only took Andrea 2 days to get me under control. 83 blogs later and you have all stopped caring and no one leaves any comments any more :( Atleast Andrea still loves me even if my bloggees don't (I am guess that is what you call people that read a blog since I a the blogger).

Have fun.

Holy camerification batman!

I FINALLY HAVE A CAMERA!!!

Thats right guys, watch out Ricky, move aside Val, stop playing around Adam and put your big flash away Robbie.

What did I get? One of these.

It is soo cool. I haven't had a decent play with it yet because I picked it up just before going out to dinner with Andrea (it's been two months now ppl!). It is 10mega pixels which is freakin huge! It's got the flip out swively screen thing like Val and Adam's cameras.

The thing turns on faster than you can say "smile". It takes successive pictures like it is on a mission to fill the memory card. The flash is bright enough on its full setting to blind anyone even when they aren't looking at the camera. It has a billion settings that I don't understand.... yet.

I can't wait til I get to take some cool shots with it. Hopefully there will be heaps of photos to sort through when I return from New Zealand.

Unfortunately it would seem that no one in brisbane has any 4GIG SD cards atm so I will have to make do with a 2GIG card for a while :( The good news is that my flash camera can take the new SDHC which might start appearing in Australia soon which will eventually support upto 32GIG. I can't wait for them to bring out the 8GIG card.... a couple of those would do the trick nicely :P

Here are a few photos so far. I have shrunk them down heaps because they aren't good enough to upload in there full 10mp glory. Once I have a decent shot I will put the full thing up.



More to come for sure!

Have fun.

Bikeway Closure

How do you solve Brisbane's traffic problems? You build tunnels. How do you build tunnels? You close those unused bikeway things. Which bikeway? How about the one that feeds into the CBD from nearly all the Southern suburbs!

Thats right ladies and gentlemen. I know most of you don't cycle and even less of you commute on a bike. Surely you can still see the significant stupidity in this proposal though.

I am pretty sure that everyone I know bar a couple of people that commute to work/uni on a bike use the section of bikeway in question. I ride along it on nearly any ride that isn't going directly to/from uni.

At peak hour there is a constant stream of bikes along this section. If you look at the alternatives around this area you will soon see that a couple of thousand cyclists a day taking alternative routes along the roads will cause absoloute chaos on the roads in the areas.

Why don't the cyclists just ride for the next three years? HAHAHAHA yeah that is going to help the traffic... the environment... parking... the price of petrol. Here is the government freaking out over the water situation due to global warming and about the price of petrol. HELLO bikes are the one thing you SHOULD be encouraging like there is no tommorow.

Another big problem faced by the world today is the growing number of overweight and unfit people (note these are two different things, many people fit in both or neither but they are not the same thing). How do you fight both of these together? Regular exercise. How can you find time in your busy day to exercise? Do it while you commute.

So what would I do if I was in power (mmmm... power)? Well I would shove the tunnel idea and start improving bikeways. There are some really good stretches of bikeway that allow cyclists to commute a long way very efficiently. There are others that are constantly interupted by side streets and road crossings. There are lots of little sections that dont join up. There are sections that flood as soon as it rains (they are designed to do that) but then the mud is never cleared from the path making them slipery. Provided more bike racks. That does not include removing the ones in the CBD or the ones outside my bike shop as has happened recently. Dedicate a side of story bridge for cyclists and one for pedestrians so we don't have to stop for the shaftston students that block the path. Enforce "bikes only" sections of bikeways and provide more of them so that cyclists can travel at a decent speed. I could go on and on....

Hopefully you support this point of view (you are entitled to your own). Please leave a comment and lets us know your opinion.

For further information please read this. I will try to find more information soon.

Have fun.

The Noosa Trilogy - Part 3: endless sand

Sunday morning was an early start with pancakes and crumpets which despite Dannii's blog entry were cooked by Andrea AND ME! We had a quick pack up and hit the road a little behind schedule.

After a quick top up of the petrol tanks and a short barge ride we were ready to hit the sand... well after letting some air out of the tyres.

The weather was awesome. The cars all behaved themselves and I only got the tide slightly wrong. There wasn't much traffic around and on the hard sand it was easy to make some serious ground. Not to mention how easy it was to drive through some of the incomming waves and get the passengers of my car wet :)

The first stop was at the coloured sands where we went for a wander into the hills (pregnant lady and all). The amazing weather made experience so worth while.

Next stop was the cherry venture (or whats left of it) which involved stopping in some nice soft sand in an attempt to get Cam stuck which failed. The cherry venture is an old ship wreck from the 70's which is kinda cool. What interested Robbie more was the guys over the back in the sand dunes doing some insane hill climbing.

We had a little more energy to burn so we headed up the hill to the lighthouse where we managed to see dolphins, manta rays and a turtle. By this stage everyone was hungry and wanted the toilet so we headed back to freshwater creek.

The turn into freshwater has a lot of soft sand and I stupdily decided to go first in my poor old hilux... not to mention i was in 2wd and 2nd gear.... yeah not happening. Long story short I didn't make it into 1st gear 4wd fast enough so the poor old girl died. A quick turn of the key and a shift in to low range soon got us back under way having held up Robbie and Cam.

Along with lunch the cars got a well deserved break as well as a bit of oil for my old girl. Lunch was leftovers from Saturday nights feast and was awesome and almost relaxed.. Relaxed except for Andrea worrying about the goanna's :P

Robbie decided that since the tide was on its way in we would head inland along the bush tracks, back out onto the highway and back to the beach (further south) on another bush track. This was awesome fun but Dannii's belly (or more what is growing in it) didn't think it was much fun (unlike Cam and Andrea who both wanted to go over all the bumps faster).

Eventually after a hell of alot of fun bumps and exploring we ended up back out on the beach where it was now high tide. No problems for Cam with his powerful little fourby but it certainly made my car (and me work hard).

Well that was pretty much the end of the most awesome birthday weekend EVER! I had an awesome time and I think everyone else did to. We will be doing more of this so keep yours eyes out for future trips.

There will be photos up tonight or you can look at them on Andrea's blog.

Have fun.

The Noosa Trilogy - Part 2: too close sonny

Saturday morning rocked around and we started the day with fresh chocolate crossaints in bed... it's a tough life when your a student. We then did some cooking to get ready for dinner.

What was on the menu? Pasta bake, potato bake, chicken, steak, sausages, salad, bread, chocolate cake. mmmmm all sooooo yummy.

After slaving away in the kitchen (I did ALL the work of course and wasnt slowing Andrea down one little bit :P ) and after a quick clean up we decided to go to the beach. This is a journey I have made hundreds of times in cars, on bikes, jogging, walking and who knows how else. So we trundled along to the beach and just before we got to hastings st (between the two roundabouts for those that know noosa) we stopped in traffic and the guy behind me who was all of 17-18 bumped into the back of my car.

He was only going about 5km/hr when he made contact but this is the first time anyone has layed a finger on my car since I bought it all those years ago. I have gone out of my way to keep my baby out of harms way and this guy decides to hit it ON MY BIRTHDAY!

So Andrea is sitting there like WTF? I am sitting there like "I hope that was as small as i think it was.... I hope he hit what I think he hit...". We pulled over and I jumped out strolled around the back of the car. Sure enough he had run straight into my little towbar (I had just taken the tongue out the day before so he just hit the square section.... it's only rated to 1800kg). The guy was still in his car packing his daks (especially now he had seen how huge and muscley I am).

The damage? SFA. I had a few chips of his paint on the tow bar. He didnt even manage to chip any paint of the tow bar. His car has noticable chunks of paint missing and the number plate was a little worse for wear. The only really damage to me was the fact that I had finally let my car get hurt. But there wasnt really all that much I could do about it.

We walked along the beach to relieve my frustration then had really good gelato (there are 5 icecream places in 400m on hastings st so it took us a while to decide). Then it was nap time. Andrea read Cosmo to me while I lay there thinking about how lucky that punk was that he didnt do any damage to MY car on MY birthday.

Just as I was about to fall asleep my phone rings and Cam tells me he is here. Let the party begin. Back to the beach for a while. Then back into the kitchen and we started to prepare dinner. Matt and Nat finally arrived followed by Danni and Rob. Soon we were all sitting around the table pigging out on an awesome meal!

Some of us had a few drinks (Andrea, Matt, Nat and myself) and we all relaxed and had an early night ready for the fun that was to come.

So that was my birthday...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Have fun.

The Noosa Trilogy - Part 1: the beginning

Well for all of you slackers that missed my birthday weekend and instead decided to stay at home and wonder why my blog wasnt getting updated I will give you a full report over the days to come.

Last week dragged on and on like the weekend was never going to arrive. It finally started to rain in Brisbane again. The rain was a welcome change but it had to start just as I am about to have a weekend away and when they are trying to start the foundations of Andrea's house.

Finally friday arrived and an HOUR after leaving springwood Andrea FINALLY got to my place and we threw our stuff in the mighty hilux and headed off under grey skys towards more grey skys. We eventually arrived in the pouring rain and Andrea was intent on waiting in the carport for it to pass. I was keen to just run in given that I have spent weekends at Noosa where it just pours constantly. Having run in to the unit in the pouring rain it then stopped (Andrea 1 : Ed 0).

Thankfully that was the end of the rain for the weekend. We did a bit of shopping, had some really good chips and gravy before... we finally made it to the actual beach which Andrea didn't get to see last time. We went to the national park to watch the surfers at the point for a while. Then out to the mouth of the river (a beautiful spot).

Being "edrea" we then went out for dinner which consisted of pizza, ribs, wings and veggies. It was yummy and went down well as we slowly walked home along the river in the moonlight.

So that was friday...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Have fun.

Noosa without the quiters

YAY.

Its time to pack my bags and go to Noosa once again.

Andrea has the day off work (today is her showday) and we are heading up to noosa in about 4 hours. It looks like the weather is going to clear up for the weekend (that is weather man code for 'its about to piss down all weekend'). On Sunday we are going four wheel driving up the beach to double island point whether it rains or not.

The list of people coming four wheel driving is disapointingly small (like me).
:( Nobody loves me :(

A lot of people have decided that maybe I don't realise that it is fathers day and have pointed this out (about 10 of you soo far).

YES I realise it's fathers day
YES I realise it's river fire on Saturday night
YES I realise you can't make sacrifices for the coolest friend in the world :P

I know it isn't the greatest weekend to be doing this but ITS MY BIRTHDAY. The fact that it is also Andrea's long weekend was a nice little bonus when we realised. The other factor was that we couldnt fit it in any earlier and we didnt want to leave it any later because Dannii's up the duff and is now HUGE!!! (only joking Dannii, you always were and always will be :P...... a hottie).

To those that are coming: YAY YAY YAY!!! Its going to be great

For those that aren't: I guess I will forgive you :P Seriously I do understand. Maybe next time.

Have fun. I know I will!