dare2draw

What is the bat for?

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:38:01 +1000

The Ashes may be slipping away again. Edgbaston, and Hussey leaves another delivery only to be bowled for a duck! Luckily he batted well in the second innings to save the Test. Come on Mike that is the third time this year you have left a ball and gone out, what is the bat for? Your bat sponsor pays you to have the logo in the correct orientation and waving at the ball, not upside down in mid air. I remember Gatting used to often get out not offering a shot. So much so that my Dad referred to such a dismissal as 'out Gatting.' If Hussey continues to leave the ball and get bowled then we have to start referring to it as being ' out Husseyed.'
For newcomers to Test cricket, listen carefully, 1. in England the ball swings, and 2. it doesn't bounce over the stumps. If you leave anything close to the stumps you are gone!
For Australia, 1 down in the series, it is a long way back from here. England's bowling is good, good enough to win the Ashes. C'mon Aussies, frappe fort (my old College motto fight hard).

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North Korea Qualifies for FIFA diplomacy

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:23:50 +1000

North Korea Qualifies

A rogue state, nuclear weapons, chest-beating diplomacy, and international condemnation may all evaporate as FIFA's World Cup takes over. North Korea's qualification for the Finals in 2010 has elevated them into World headlines for a good reason for once. Maybe now the hand of friendship will enter US relations with North Korea as sport leads the way in bringing nations together. US lead brinkmanship within the UN has failed to deliver. A case of bringing the wrong ball to the game. As the World now looks at North Korea in a different light, the universal code of Football will momentarily bring nations together. It did so in 1998 in a match between the USA and Iran, and it did it in 1966 when North Korea last made the finals. Chest-Beating Diplomacy then dictated that there would be no flag or National Anthem ceremonies for North Korea, but their exuberant football won the hearts of the crowds. My dad went to some of the 1966 matches and told me of how North Korea were crowd favourites and many were disappointed that Eusabio's run of goals stopped them in a Quarter Final.
This time I would expect them to get a more friendly reception from the hosts South Africa given its Government's socialist leanings, but I wouldn't expect them to get past the first stage of competition. Just for fun it would be good to see North Korea drawn in a group with USA, or England, just to rub their politicians face in it.

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Slide scanning shapes up

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:39:42 +1000

CathedralNight

I just purchased an Epson V300 photo scanner that can scan up to four 35mm slides at a time. Beats the old Canon that I had, 1 slide at a time and the resolution wasn't great. It also ran in the Classic environment on my Mac and was slow. The Epson is quicker to set up then just let it take a few minutes to scan the slides unsupervised, and take a tea break. When you come back they're done. I have had a few goes at various image types and there is a trap for young players. The scratch and dust removal feature looks a great idea until you try something tricky like the slide at right. Because this was a night shot with tiny star images, the dust removal software can't seem to tell the difference and tried to remove many of the stars. I simply repeated the process without the dust removal and then manually painted over the dust specs in procreate painter classic with a graphics tablet and pen. The image at right is the Cathedral rock feature of Mount Buffalo in Victoria, Australia, taken on Ektachrome 400, 30 seconds F2.8, March 1997. It was almost a full moon at the time.
I have a large slide collection and am now in the process of scanning the best to show on the web and to archive some ancient slides from my childhood to serve as a safeguard. This mountainous task looks a bit easier now.
For web publishing I've been playing with Jalbum, which isn't to difficult to use and you can publish up to 30MB on their server. Flickr allows you more space but is slower to organise and you are limited in the number of albums.

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DeWith

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:21:40 +1100

I've just been to a couple of Historic Racing meetings at Phillip Island

DewithWeb

Good weather for the bikes but wet for the cars. Ginger Molloy is still racing Bultacos. He looks old and doddery as he strolls around but he is as tightly tucked and effortlessly streamlined on the bike. His flowing lines are majestic, even artistic, and he is still at the front!
Adam Treasure and Chrissie Clancy weren't able to display artistic lines after they're Honda DeWith stopped at turn 1. These photos need a caption like 'I thought you had the keys,' or 'I've dropped my sunglasses into the carby." Despite this, the sidecars still put on a great show. Many of us in the crowd just go silent in admiration of the swingers placing their heads millimetres from the ground.
The international challenge saw another batch of Poms venture down south to be crushed like flies. The Aussie and Kiwi camps have too many ex pros in their ranks. Next year I'll just have drape a St Georges Cross or two over the fence to lend them some support.
The historic car racing took place in tricky conditions and when it was deemed too slippery out came a safety car. Not exactly in keeping with history to see 1930s skinny tyred open wheelers forming up behind a 2008 Mustang with flashing lights. Still, the drivers and crowd had a lot of fun. This might just inspire us to venture to Historic Winton at the end of May.

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L'Inferno, The Horror.

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:35:59 +1100

The Horror

Saturday Feb 7, 2009 l'inferno. A ferocious wind, a record high temperature of 46 degrees for Melbourne, a tinder dry state, and a sudden tornado of fire brought a hellish death to nearly 200 Victorians trapped in the inferno's path. Unfortunately this isn't the first time and it won't be the last. We have just past an anniversary of Ash Wednesday, 1983's firestorm fury, and in January we passed the 70th anniversary of the legendary Black Friday. News of the recent fires prompted me to read about Black Friday 1939 . These fires are the stuff of legend, burning almost a quarter of the state of Victoria. Fires that had been burning for some time, took hold on a scorching day and ripped through vast tracks of bushland. There are tales of sawmillers caught and killed in the open, charred unidentifiable bodies, scorched remains near cars on forest roads, people just lucky enough to make it inside a dugout or river to survive. Interestingly 1939, 1983, and 2009 were all preceded by dry Springs and a succession of 40 degree days, and on the day in question all had severe hot Northerly winds. In excess of 70 people died in each firestorm. Royal Commissions followed each (yet another has been called for this year) with countless recommendations. Despite all our knowledge and documented experience, the death toll still rises. I suppose they'll come up with a name for the day like Roasted Saturday. We are running out of apocalyptic days, we've already had a Black Friday, a Black Sunday, an Ash Wednesday, a Red Tuesday. History does repeat!
Dr Tim Flannery (the Future Eaters) wrote of the role fires played in shaping the Australian bush. Plant species best equipped to regenerate or germinate after fire will dominate and in the case of eucalypts, whose high flammability promotes fires, are winning this evolutionary arms race. In fact I'd say that on this continent the order of species goes, eucalyptus first, and us hominids a distant second.

The picture is one of mine, prepared in the chemical darkroom days of 1989, to capture mans fear of and fascination for fire. It is simply called 'the Horror.'

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Curly Gilera

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:14:57 +1000

Simoncelli

Marco Simoncelli wins the Phillip Island 250cc GP. A victory for big hair and Gilera. This win extends his championship lead and revives memories of another Gilera mounted champion, Umberto Massetti in 1957. So the Italians are back in a big moto way.
I saw Massetti ride his 1957 Gilera at Phillip Island 8 years ago at the Historic races, glorious sound. With talk of changing 250cc to four-stroke 600, maybe those great Gilera sounds will return.

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Noise, noise, noise

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:43:41 +1000

Sw080917_2

Lately I've descended into madness, tinkering with radio astronomy. Is this a mid life crisis where I am revisiting former hobbies. My local astronomical society recently sparked some interest in radio astronomy so I thought I'd give it a go. One of my colleagues is still waiting for parts for a Radio Jove receiver to detect radio bursts from the planet Jupiter. While he is waiting I've rigged up some HF antennas with an old sw radio, a computer and Skypipe software from Radiosky.com, should be simple. Hmmm! The chart at right shows one typical night with frequent man made interference. In amongst that we are trying to detect Jupiter. The odds are slim. Still I could pass the charts off as art, maybe an installation with the background hiss audible, a cosmic experience. Anyway FM meteor pings look like my next target.

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Captain Pietersen

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:13:21 +1000

Pietersen

Finally awarded the captaincy of the Her Magesty's Ship England, Kevin Pietersen sets sail to restore the might of English cricket. His first voyage will have calm seas but there is a looming storm that will test his battleworthiness.
Great players don't always make great captains, and a great captain doesn't make a great team. Talented players peaking in performance and sticking to good strategy will be required when the Aussies return to seek revenge for 2005.

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The indestructible Taliban

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:29:20 +1000

TalibanKabul

The more we hammer them the stronger they get. The Taliban will not cease to exist. The very forces that seek to destroy them are precisely what motivate them. Now there is talk of sending foreign troops into Pakistan to take the Taliban on in their homeland, in order to prop up the failures in Afghanistan. Pakistan have enough instability problems to deal with as it is. Eventually western powers will see that it will be politically expedient to forge a secret peace deal with the Taliban, giving them control of the border region. It will also be necessary to guarantee that they will be left alone in their mountain retreat in Pakistan. This will return Afghanistan to a state of perpetual unease where a peace exists only because each of the waring factions can't defeat the others. This will provide the West with the easy way out, and the 'Mayor of Kabul' will take his tiny empire and retire in the south of France, or wherever he can maintain his elegant dress sence.

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Mugabe takes Tsvangirai's hand

nobody@vox.com(dare2draw) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:09:15 +1000

MugabeTsvangirai

Zimbabwe's historic handshake raised hopes of a solution to the political crisis. Unfortunately this will be just more of Mugabe's Machiavellian manoeuvres to, 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' As I pointed out last week that Mugabe was in fact an extraterretrial, and that he is so ancient, that it wouldn't surprise me if Machiavelli met Mugabe and wrote his famous del Principe based on his encounter. Mugabe's scheming knows no bounds and Morgan Tsvangirai will face even more obstacles to his planned reforms. Mugabe can always turn a face saving gesture into a cruel and sudden victory. Beware 'the Prince.'

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