Transport woes update

Well, I took the 3 month option. This is my current mode of transport:


It makes things difficult, especially in Melbourne's winter. But it's no big deal really. its just not what I'm used to. I don't think you could really categorise having to get to work by: motorised pushbike, public transport, and charitable loved one, a hardship.

I certainly don't feel any remorse or guilt over the incidents that put me in this situation. Travelling slightly faster than an arbitrary speed limit, on roads and in situations that could safely handle a much higher speed, is not what I would call criminal or being a bad citizen. In fact what I would call it is a cynical money making exercise. Or at best, that I was the victim of being caught in a trap designed for somebody else. Sort of collateral damage in the war against hooning.

Anyway it will only last 'till the middle of September. Then beckons springtime in the hills around Melbourne, astride my lovely Ducati.

Those Crazy Americans

Apparently a supercomputer built for the US government has performed the first petaflop in history. So what's crazy about that? Well the computer is called Roadrunner. It seems whatever they do, they have to include some form of cultural evangelism. I mean ok, call it something that's fast and ok, american too, 'cos that's where its made. But why name it after a cartoon character? A bad and boring one at that. (and I'll bet that to most people in the world it IS a cartoon character, not an example of the local fauna in new mexico). They should have just gone all the way and called it Speedy Gonzales, but then they couldn't have gotten out of paying royalties to warner bros. (Which is also why if one was built in Hobart, it wouldn't be called Tassie Devil) To be fair, it's quite likely however, that whoever named it was NOT thinking about the rest of the world at the time.

My mistress' eyes

Sabine came over to Tas for the weekend. Naturally, this reminds me of my favorite Shakespeare sonnet:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight


Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,--
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.