There’s a slim possibility that even though Liverpool won’t finish in the top 4 in the league, we may yet get into next year’s Champion’s League if we manage to beat AC Milan in the final this year. Fingers crossed!

Myself, Tom and Niall went over to Mosman yesterday for an ‘Intro To Kayaking’ lesson with Sydney Harbour Kayaks and had a great time. It’s an all-day course which assumes you know nothing about kayaking. You get set up with your own kayak, flotation device and paddle, then spend the morning session learning all the different types of strokes to allow you to manoeuvre your kayak – sweep strokes to turn, draw strokes to move sideways and stopping strokes (to stop obviously).

You also learn how to lean the boat over to one side which makes it easier to turn. You have to lean away from the turn, so it’s the opposite direction from biking, snowboarding or anything else, so it’s a bit counterintuitive. In fact, it’s so counterintuitive that Niall capsized twice while practising! Given that the rescue session was supposed to be in the afternoon, he claims he was just getting a head start.

The three hours in the morning flew by and soon we were munching our way through a burger before preparing for the afternoon session. As previously mentioned, this was when we learned how to get ourselves back into the boat if we capsized, both with the help of another paddler and unaided. There were three different types of rescues: the T rescue is where you help another paddler to get back into their boat, the paddle rescue involves strapping a rubber sleeve to one end of your paddle, inflating it and then using it like an outrigger to get back into your boat, and the final method is the cowboy rescue, so called because you end up straddling the boat and sliding along it before dropping your arse back into the seat.

All in all it was a great day. We all learned a lot and would be quite happy paddling anywhere on flat water, secure in the knowledge that we’d be able to deal with capsizing etc. We’re not ready for shooting rapids, or open ocean paddling yet though ;-)

Yep, I had a prang in my new car :-( Reversed into a parked car cause I didn’t check my driver’s side blind spot. One of my neighbours too! My car’s fine and my insurance covers everything else, so I just have to pay the excess, which is $900 – crap. Still, no-one’s hurt so it’s all good. Maybe I should stick to two wheels?

Have just watched an excellent Four Corners documentary on global dimming. Turns out that pollution is causing clouds to reflect an increasing amount of sunlight back into space. This results in less sun hitting the ground, leading to a lowering effect on temperatures. So, in our efforts to cut pollution we are actually accelerating the rate of global warming. Talk about a catch-22.

I remember the smog over Dublin before the compulsory switch to smokeless coal and the fact that pollution causes a large increase in the rate of respiratory diseases, as well as acid rain, the bete noire of the 80s Green movement, so just upping pollution to slow global warming is not an option. The only way out of the mire is to make a concerted effort to also reduce greenhouse gas emissions in tandem with pollution.

As it turns out, the original programme was an Horizon episode by the BBC. That’s one of the main things I miss about home – quality science documentaries where you actually learn something. The BBC’s science and nature stuff is top notch, and I’d hazard a guess that it’s probably the only English-language broadcaster worldwide regularly making quality documentaries. It’s an excellent example of a public utility outperforming private enterprise, which inevitably caters for the lowest common denominator. I remember when I first got cable TV, thinking that Discovery and National Geographic looked promising, but now both invariably seem to be showing “When Animals Attack”-style sensationalist rubbish. Long live the Beeb!

Incidentally, another excellent BBC show is being aired here: Grumpy Old Men ;-)

Illegal immigration won John Howard the 2001 Australian election. We had the Tampa Boat Crisis where Australia, in violation of maritime law, refused assistance to people rescued from international waters, we had claims, later proven false, that refugees had thrown their children into the water in a bid to have them picked up by the watching Australian Navy, and plenty of other spurious claims which all turned out to be lies post-election. The Australian public ate it up and duly re-elected Howard.

With the current election cmapaign in the UK, it had been noted that two of the key architects of John Howard’s Australian victory had been hired to help the Conservatives defeat Labour. To no-one’s great surprise immigration was made a hot-topic and the usual crap talking points surfaced. Now it appears that Tory front-benchers are asking that the immigration rhetoric be toned down amid fears that it’s not having the desired effect.

At least some people see through the bullshit.

The Independent reveals that satellite photography techniques have finally allowed historians to read a vast collection of ancient Greek & Roman documents. Known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the collection was discovered in Egypt in the late 1800s and has been stored in Oxford University ever since. Should be interesting to see what lessons we’ll learn.

The ABC reports that new slime-mould beetles have been named after the US administration:

Two former Cornell University entomologists named three species in the genus Agathidium after the US leaders, Cornell has announced.

Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller christened 65 new species of slime-mould beetles, named for the fungi-like moulds on which they feed, which they discovered after collecting thousands of specimens for a study of their evolution and classification.

The original article was about bias in political science university courses, but I think the following quote sums up quite accurately what the aim of a third-level education really is:

The question is, whether students come out of the class having learned to reason about a set of problems or not. The content is not as important, since they’ll forget a lot of the content anyway, and will receive it selectively, both during and after the class. But if you teach them to take things apart and see how they work, to think about social and political causation, to see how things work together, in a particular field, then they can produce their own knowledge and understanding about it thereafter.

Juan Cole

Turns out Mum didn’t sprain her ankle in NZ after all, she broke her leg!

Mum & Dad left Sydney for Singapore yeaterday afternoon. We had intended doing the Bondi to Bronte walk with them, but Mum managed to sprain her ankle while in New Zealand, so that put paid to that and we drove instead. We arrived in Bronte for a relaxing breakfast with Caoimhe and Dave, then hung around for a last view of the surf before heading home so they could go to the airport. I was sad to see them go, but at least now they know what it’s like here and why I’ve chosen to make it my home.

Woke up this morning to a text from Cormac saying that Mum & Dad were OK and weren’t near the earthquake at all. I had no idea what he was talking about so jumped up and checked the papers, only to find that there was an 8.7 magnitude quake off Indonesia!

Made it to Canberra safely this morning, after taking over the steering wheel from Tom for the final 210km. It was a very uneventful drive with the only incident being some guy flashing his lights because I was forced to move into the overtaking lane as four cars merged onto the motorway beside me. As I’m restricted to 80km/h instead of 110, the manoeuver caused that tosser to arrive at his destination approximately 10 seconds later than normal. Anyway, he got pissed off enough that he flashed his lights and overtook on the inside. After that it was plain sailing.

Myself and Becs have been talking of doing the Spit Bridge to Manly walk for ages, and yeterday we finally got around to it. Jacqui, Rachel and Nicki came along as well, so it was me and the chicks. We elected to start from Becs’ place in Mosman, which added annother 4km to the distance, giving us a 14km total. It was an easy enough walk, with a couple of muddy bits as a result of the recent tain, though in fairness the weather was a bit confused. We had to wait a bit until the rain stopped before setting off, there were occasional showers en route yet in other parts it was roasting. About 1km out of Manly I could see the storm clouds advancing across the harbour, with a demarcating rain line on the sea, so we finished with some power walking and reached the safety of a cafe without getting soaked.

I rang Graham to get him to come down for some lunch as I hadn’t seen him for ages. As it turned out it was his birthday as well, so he brought along some wine and the two of us spent the next few hours getting trashed. Probably not the best recovery from a monster walk, but who cares! My hips are killing me today though, so I probably should have done some streatching. On a brighter note, Becs is keen to get involved in some Adventure Racing with me, so all I need is to round up one more team member and choose an upcoming event to get involved in.

I brought Jacqui’s camera along and busied myself taking snaps along the route as the girls nattered away. I’d never seen the harbour from that side before, which was a major motivation for doing the walk in the first place, so it made sense to document it a bit. I’ll get the film developed during the week and upload some photos.

It’s been a hectic week this week. Mum & Dad arrived last Monday for their first visit to Australia. Met them at the airport, brought them home, then took them on the cliff walk down to Bondi, stopping by Duncan Page Reserve so they could get a great view back over the city. Walked along the beach, then had breakfast in the Tratt.

On Tuesday, we left my place and walked along the cliffs in the opposite direction, down to Watsons Bay where we had fish & chips at Doyles, followed by a ferry ride into the city. It’s the best way to approach the city – great scenery and you pass right by the Opera House. Walked around Circular Quay a bit, then checked out the Opera House for a while, and finished off with a walk through the Botanical Gardens (where we saw all the fruit bats roosting in the trees), up Macquarie St., past Parliament House and down to Martin Place for the train home.

I worked on Wednesday, then we went to see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky at the Opera House. Worked again on Thursday then we played a round of golf in Moore Park with Tom on Friday. I played pretty badly, though there were a few good shots to draw solace from! That evening Mum & Dad got to meet Jacqui’s mum, Denise. Saturday saw us visit Paddington Markets, then we had a barbie back at our place in the afternoon with Jacqui’s family. A great time was had by all and I managed not to poison anyone with my efforts on the BBQ front. Sunday was another family day as myself, Jacqui, Mum, Dad & Denise drove up to Palm Beach, then met up with Mark and his friends for lunch and a swim at Whale Beach. Dad nearly got swept away by the undertow, which was bloody strong if you weren’t used to it, but we made it to shore fairly easily in the end.

They both love the place and can’t get over the fact that the weather is so great and that they sky is a beautiful clear blue every day. I also bought Mum a pedometer to encourage her to get out and exercise, as she’d mentioned one of her friends having one. She was delighted and has been tracking her progress every day. I think you’re supposed to do 10,000 steps per day. As it happens Tuesday was the first day she used it and she racked up 17,000 straight away, though we were pretty much walking almost all day.

Off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow!

Bought my first car today! It’s an automatic 1986 BMW 535i with 192,000kms on the clock, but only 15,000 of those since an engine rebuild. It’s in perfect condition and has been looked after extremely well by its previous owner. Myself and Mark went to check it out this morning and it looked great. Bodywork & engine look great, no rust. The only signs of wear were that the two front seats were a little threadbare and the top of the dash has a crack due to the sun. Other than that, it’s perfect, so agreed a price of $5750, and I’m picking it up next weekend.

This is hilarious. Book sales are down, and people are reading less. Publishers in the US feel that the reason is text which is too small, making it uncomfortable to read for long periods, and they plan on introducing many more large-print books. Next they’ll be complaining about all the big words and we’ll all be walking around with My First Reader in a few years.

Myself and Jacqui had a great weekend. Flew to Dubbo on Saturday morning in a small turbojet plane. Flying inland from Sydney, which was in itself unusual, it was surprising to see how green Sydney actually is. The suburbs have plenty of trees – certainly more than I’ve seen in any other city I’ve flow over – and there’s the Royal National Park to the south, Ku-ring-Gai to tne north and the Blue Mountains to the west.

We went straight to the Western Plains Zoo on landing and spent the morning cycling around the zoo. Jacqui was more excited by the fact that she could cycle a bike than with the animals! There were plenty of keeper talks, including one with the Siamang apes at which the two individuals performed an amazing inpromptu territorial song, and another where you could feed the giraffes.

After checking in to our safari-style accommodation, we jumped on the first of our behind the scenes tours, visiting elephants, then giraffes (which we fed again) and finishing up watching a pack of African wild dogs being fed a kangaroo carcass – probably not the best thing to see before sitting down to some lamb rump! The second tour commenced immediately after dinner and this time we called in on the tigers (completely distinterested in us), the wombat (quite happy to stand and allow us to pat/stroke her) and the hippos. We were also able to tickle the Giant Tortoises, one of which promptly farted with pleasure!

That was it for the evening, which was just as well as we were both exhausted. Rising bright and early at 7am, we got the final guided tour with a visit to the White Handed Gibbons, the Siamang apes, a stop to feed a rhino follwed by a visit to the lions. Initially they weren’t interested in our presence at all, but once we walked around to the side of their night enclosure, and they noticed there were two small kids with us, everything changed. Both of them bounded up to the fence and started pacing alongside, keeping a close eye on the child. One tired of this an went to lie down at the far side of the cage as the child had wandered away. A few minutes later the kid returned to the fence area, and turned her back on the cage as she was talking to her Dad; straight away the other lion jumped up, ran over and crouched down ready to pounce on the other side of the fence. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the child was little more than a chicken nugget!

A tasty fry-up followed, after which we checked out and wandered around the public side of the zoo checking out the animals we’d missed the previous day, and killing time until the rhino tour, which was an extra not included in the safari package. It was well worth it as we visited three difference species of rhino and were allowed to feed two (Black Rhino & Greater One-horned Rhino) and see a week-old White Rhino (already weighing approx. 80kg!)

We later spent a brief moment in Dubbo itself before jumping on the plane back to Sydney in time for Law & Order ;-) The trip is definitely worth doing, especially since the Parkes Telescope is only an hour away, so you could combine the two. I only found that out while I was already there, which pissed Jacqui off as I’d already admitted not researching the holiday. Oh well, it just means we’ll have to go back some time.

I’ve just got my iPod Shuffle up and running and it’s great! For a start it’s tiny, about the length of my index finger and a third as thick. It took me ages to rebuild my iTunes library from my ‘normal’ iPod after my external HD crashed last week, but once I had I plugged the iShuffle (as I’m calling it) in, and told it to Autofill at random from my ‘non-clubbing’ playlist. That’s when I noticed the one and only issue – USB is bloody slow when you’re used to Firewire. The first song it chose was George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice which I haven’t heard in years – it sounds fantastic on the headphones, so that’s scotched the rumours that the supplied headphones weren’t that good. Maybe if you’re an audiophile you will notice flaws, but for the average person they’re more than capable. AU$150 gets you a 512Mb iShuffle which is a bargain as far as I’m concerned. Even Dean (our office PC holdout) got one today ;-)

In a week where an Elvis re-release made No.1 in the UK selling only 30,000 copies, the Guardian bemoans the state of the UK Singles Chart.

According to Paul Williams of Music Week magazine, the excitement waned when singles began automatically to enter the chart at No 1 – landed there by advance radio play and mailshots to fans – rather than start low and gradually climb. Of the 156 No 1s this century, only three did not debut at the top. “It’s all about scheduling now. It’s much easier for the business to line up what’s going to be No 1 – you know from the schedules, ‘Oh, that’ll be No 1, and next week that’ll be No 1’. In the past, you could never predict – it was all up to the fans.”

I remember sitting down to watch Top Of The Pops, wondering who would be No.1 this week. Now it’s all manufactured & manipulated crap, like so much else.

So, time to take stock of last year’s resolutions. They were:

1. Get back to my normal weight of approx. 80kg

2. Complete a sprint distance triathlon (or longer)

3. Complete a 2km+ ocean swim

4. Get my body fat under 14%

Missed out on 1, but managed to drop from 89kg to 84.7kg.

Missed out on 2 as well, but I’m doing one next weekend, so that’s close enough.

Did 3 (woo hoo!)

Missed out on 4, but dropped from 19% to 16.8%.

So, to this year’s resolutions. Well, the theme is the same, so I’ll keep 1 & 4 from last year and add a couple more exercise related ones.

1. Get under 80kg.

2. Get under 14% body fat.

3. Complete an Olympic Distance traithlon

4. Do either an adventure race or an MTB race.

Grab the nearest book.

Open the book to page 123.

Find the fifth sentence.

Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

We experimented with the thatch itself and found that the larva can repair it.

[via Erik’s Blog]