New car

On Monday we drove to Townsville (300 km north, about 4 hours with rest breaks) to get the car serviced. It was very overdue for a service, though it hasn’t been used that much. The log book shows that in a typical year we drive around 5,000 km; even with the around-Australia trip in 2004 contributing nearly 20,000 km, our total distance for a bit over 5 years is under 45,000 km. The tyres need replacing (turns out the tread was worn to an illegal level), but otherwise the car’s in great shape. But it’s reaching the age where things are more likely to go wrong, and its resale value is plummeting, so I wanted to test-drive the new models (Subaru Forester X), which sounded great in the reviews and in the specs on the Subaru website. And with the Austra­lian dollar at or near its highest value in many years, the cost of new cars is about the same as what I paid for mine five years ago. So I test-drove the car, liked it, dickered a bit with the salesman, consulted with Eric, and bought the demonstrator car (for a small discount off the nominal price). A bit of phoning and faxing later, I had arranged with my credit union to transfer the money from my account into the car dealer­ship’s bank account, so by the following day we sorted out the last of the paper­work and I was able to drive the car home. The trip home was delayed (predictably) by the dealership not having it cleaned and ready to go by noon (as they had promised), but by 3 PM we were on our way. Less than 10 km down the road, my mobile phone rang; the salesman sheepishly said that he’d forgotten to put the registration sticker on the car. Oops! So back we went, got the sticker, and set off again. By then we had no chance of getting home before dark (which is around 6 PM at this time of year). We don’t like driving at dusk because of the increased chance of running (literally) into wildlife on the road, but fortunately that didn’t happen.

Medical update

Medical update: When I saw the physio on Wednesday for a monthly checkup, he seemed reasonably pleased with my progress, though it's obvious to both of us that I still have a ways to go. He then had me do some new exercises (with an exercise ball, one of the big ones you can sit on) and seemed a bit surprised that I did the first few quite easily and well. So he immediately put me onto the intermediate series of exercises, some for strength and others for balance, and on the way home I bought an exercise ball to add to my extensive collection of equipment. I liked them when I was going to the gym. I also bought a new electric jug—this one with a covered spout, to discourage geckos and other wildlife from falling in.

Marina construction update

Although I complain about the noise and dust from the marina construction, it's often very entertaining. Yesterday was better than a 5-ring circus. In addition to the usual collection of diggers filling trucks with dirt to be taken from one part of the site to another, we had: a series of trucks delivering drainage pipes, sand, gravel, rolls of plastic, large boulders, and other constructions materials; two large diggers creating a big trench in the previously-flattened area and other equipment planting drainage pipes in the trench; trees being removed and preparations made for shifting the site offices to another part of the site; and—in the center ring!—the display and sales office (about the size of a 3-bedroom house) being moved several hundred yards to its new location. The latter process took all day and included 8 or 10 helmeted people peering intently under the building as it was jacked up and a huge flatbed truck moved underneath it, then a heavy tractor was attached by a chain to the front of the truck and hauled it part of the distance (probably a slight slope was involved and the truck couldn't cope on its own), after which the truck drove the rest of the way and made a complicated 5-point turn to get the building oriented as they wanted it, and finally—just before sunset—it was moved into position. This morning they reinstalled the jacks, removed the truck, and have now lowered the building to rest on concrete pads under the stumps. We have photos of the whole process; I hope to get them into an album and online soon.

Geckos beware

Yesterday started off with a shock: I boiled my tea water in the electric jug (similar to an electric kettle) and then discovered the jug contained a (now boiled) gecko. Apparently the poor creature had fallen in through the spout sometime overnight. I don't know whether it had drowned before being boiled, but either way—the incident really put me off the idea of tea for the day. I think it was the same critter that had fallen into the honey container a few weeks ago. Sigh... I'm planning to get a new jug; I can't bear the though of using the old one, even if I clean it thoroughly. Meanwhile, the microwave oven boils water just fine. Eric took photos of the deceased, but I won't inflict them on you.

Medical update

Eric and I drove to Mackay for my routine checkup by the orthopedic surgeon. As expected, he says all is well regarding my hips. I just have to keep practicing walking properly until I get it right. All the hints he gave me about walking are the same as the physio's instructions (though the physio added some specific exercises to the list), so my biggest problem is impatience. I’d probably improve faster if I following my exercise regimen more thoroughly, I must admit. And losing the weight I gained last year would no doubt help a lot too. As for the knee pain, we'll revisit that issue in 6 months at my next checkup. He says it's quite possible that the problem will resolve itself when my walking gait improves. I hope! Otherwise, he thinks it's more likely something that can be fixed with "keyhole surgery" instead of something more invasive, since the x-rays show no sign of bone wear. I've been reading a bit about the marvelous things they can do with artificial cartilege and/or fixing tendon/muscle attachments—whatever the actual problem might turn out to be. After my appointment, we did some shopping but I ran out of enthusiasm before we got through the whole list. We did find several small items that we've been hunting for some time, so we considered the day a success. I did most of the driving, and I'm delighted to report that nothing hurt or cramped up or went numb or any of the other annoying symptoms I sometimes get from being in the car for too long. When we got home, I immediately fell on the bed and slept for two hours—I'm definitely lacking in stamina after so much inactivity over the past year.

Scanning old slides

Today I finally started on a project I've been avoiding for years (because of the volume of work involved): scanning all my old slides into digital form. Several years ago I bought a scanner than handles slides and film, and I used it a bit but then got distracted by other, more interesting, projects. I have around 4,000 slides dating back to the 1960s, covering travels in Europe, North America, New Zealand, Australia and possibly North Africa. The quality of the scans isn't great, but in many cases this is because the colour in the slides has deteriorated over the years. Perhaps I'll use The Gimp to turn them all into sepia so they look even older.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 has been released!

OpenOffice.org 2.4 (the free, open-source office suite for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems) was released yesterday. It includes some great new features, which are described (with copious illustrations) at the OOo Ninja site. To download the program, go to the OpenOffice.org website and click on "I want to download OpenOffice.org". The page should detect your operating system and provide a large green button to click to start the download. There is a link just below that to click if you want to download a copy for a different operating system or a different language. If you have visited the OpenOffice.org website before, you will notice the greatly simplified new design of the home page and the cleaner, more modern overall look of the top banner and sidebar of the whole site. Good work, OOo website team!

Eric takes an "aerobatics" flight

Eric had received a gift certificate for an "aerobatics" flight in a Tiger Moth biplane operating out of our local airport, so today we drove out to the airport so he could take his flight. We see (and hear) this plane several times a day, most days, doing its stunts (rolling over, spinning around, etc) over the bay near our apartment. Eric says the flight was great and the stunts did not in fact feel like riding a roller coaster, as he had expected. Although he couldn't take photos during the stunts, he got some good photos on the flight between the airport and the bay (a few km). A photo album is here. The photos of the plane in flight were taken from our balcony on a different day (without Eric in the plane). It's very difficult to give an idea of the stunt flying without using motion photography. Perhaps we'll get a video sequence one day.

Jean buys an Asus Eee PC

The local computer store is having a sale. We went there today to buy a scanner and came home with a multifunction scanner/copier/colour-inkjet-printer to share, a terabyte USB hard drive for Eric, and an Asus Eee PC for me. It's cute, weighs less than 1kg, runs on Xandros (Linux) and has most of the programs I use every day, like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOo all set up and ready to go. It's also set up to access Google Docs, Wikipedia, Gmail, and a bunch of other things with one or two clicks. The keyboard is a bit too small for me to comfortable type more than short things like the occasional email, and the screen is very small (but clear and readable). Could be a useful travel machine. In the photos below, picture 3 shows the Asus Eee on the lower left, my Dell XPS M1210 (12.1-inch screen) on the right, and my 24-inch monitor displaying what's running on the Dell. Picture 4 shows the Eee's display mirrored on the big monitor—great for showing something to a group, or for someone with poor eyesight who needs things enlarged a lot. (I am a bit in that category myself; on any high-resolution device, including large-screen computers, I usually need to enlarge the fonts a lot.)

Eric buys a MacBook Air

After resisting temptation for over two months, last week Eric bought a MacBook Air. It arrived today. I must say it's the most elegant computer I've ever seen... as well as being ultra-thin and lightweight. The top photo below is us testing one of the marketing gimmicks from the MacBook Air announcement, where Steve Jobs slides it out of an envelope to show how thin it is. We had to find an American-sized envelope for this to work, as Australian ones (designed for paper of narrower width) didn't quite fit.

More travel photo albums (WA)

Since my last post on this topic, I've created several albums of photos from the Western Australian part of Eric's and my 2004 around-Australia trip. The latest album, featuring photos of Karijini National Park (also known as Hammersley Ranges National Park) starts here. The narrative that goes with this album is on this page, from which you can navigate to other parts of the trip report. Creating albums like these (using JAlbum) is very quick and easy—the most time-consuming part for me is selecting the photos to include. Between us, Eric and I take a lot of digital photos; including all of them would bore everyone. Then I want to crop (and, sometimes, enhance) some of them, which takes yet more time. Did I mention that I use The Gimp (a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop) for photo manipulation?

Easter, bilbies, bunnies, and chocolate

Not being Christian, I don't participate in the religious aspects of Easter, but I've always appreciated the 4-day holiday we enjoy in Australia at that time. This year the most conspicuous aspects of the holiday are a blissful silence from the very noisy marina construction site below us, and a lack of chocolate bilbies in town, since the chemist shop that normally stocks the Darrell Lea variety was flooded in January and still hasn't reopened. I mentioned bilbies, both the live and the chocolate varieties, in last year's post on the topic. One can get chocolate bilbies from places other than Darrell Lea, but Darrell Lea is the only manufacturer that gives part of the profits from each sale to the Save the Bilby campaign. In addition, the Darrell Lea bilbies come in four varieties (milk, dark, white, and sugar-free chocolate) and their chocolate tastes better than interior brands. Lastly, Darrell Lea chocolate bilbies look much more life-like than other brands'. Why bilbies? Because they are a native, endangered species that looks a bit like the imported 'bunny' rabbits, which have caused considerable damage to Australia wildlife. But what do bilbies, or bunnies for that matter, have to do with Easter? And what's with the eggs (chocolate or otherwise)? Eric (and About.com have reminded me that the rabbit—or more accurately the hare— was the symbol of Eastre, the Saxon fertility goddess. Eggs have been symbols of fertility since the ancient Greeks and Romans. The early Christian clerics took over more lively celebrations when the pagans wouldn't give up their Spring festival, so eggs and bunnies got incorporated into Christian 'Easter' celebrations despite having nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. All of that is most relevant this year, when the date of Good Friday happens to coincide with the Equinox (start of Spring in the northern hemisphere), a traditional time for pagan celebrations.

One writing project leads to another

I'm using the OpenOffice.org 2.x Writer Guide as source material for much of my new book on self-publishing, reorganising parts of it and adding new material more specific to my target audience. Parts of the Writer Guide have not been updated in over a year, so I'm finding lots of little (and not so little) mistakes, including info that became obsolete some time ago but was never spotted and updated. Since I'm updating that info for my own book, I feel obligated to update the Writer Guide itself (both the source files and, in some cases, the wiki version) as I go. I'm also referring to the new edition of the Draw Guide (which has been translated from German and not fully edited and published yet) for tips to help me create some graphics for my new book. Of course I'm spotting editorial corrections needed for the Draw Guide, and distracting myself from my main task by making those corrections. None of these are very onerous tasks, but they do mean that one writing project spawns several others, all of which take some time. It's amazing how a day can disappear on what started out as a small, apparently simple, task.

Writing another OpenOffice.org book

Although I “retired” at the end of 2007 from my role as lead editor of a group (OOoAuthors) writing OpenOffice.org user guides, I still have a lot I want to say about using the parts of OOo that I use everyday and think I understand fairly well. So I'm self-publishing again. My first project is a book with the working title of Self-publishing using OpenOffice.org Writer. The book is for beginners to intermediate users of OpenOffice.org Writer. It concentrates on the needs of people writing a book-length document such as a thesis, a novel, or a software user guide, including people who want to self-publish their book using one of the on-demand printing services like Lulu, Booksurge, or Lightning Source. I'm publishing the draft on one of my websites (Taming OpenOffice.org), using WordPress. This has been an interesting learning experience, because I wanted to make the navigation sidebar for the book’s pages different from the sidebar for the rest of the website. The simplest solution I could find (that I could understand) was to create and use a second page template, so that’s what I've done. I’m sure there are other ways (such as a conditional PHP statement) to make the sidebar show what I want, but at this point I don't want to distract myself too much from the writing by trying to learn enough PHP programming to get that done. I intend for the book to be available eventually in HTML, PDF, and printed forms. And when that's done, I have several other books in my mind, eager to get out.

Learning to walk again

Although I was able to walk again fairly soon after my second hip operation, four months later I'm still not walking well. I have a very noticeable limp or lurch, which is much worse if I'm not paying close attention to what I'm doing or if I'm a bit tired. So, a few days ago I finally got around to visiting a local physiotherapist to see if he could suggest anything I could do to improve my walking. He didn't tell me much I didn't already know, but he did tell me some specific exercises I should be doing (or doing differently than I'm doing them now) and he pointed out a few things about my walking that I didn't know (because I can't see what I'm doing or feel just what the real problem is). One of his suggestions was to exercise in a swimming pool. I said that was an excellent idea, but the chances of my actually doing it were very low. (Me: "I could say 'okay, I'll do that', but I gotta be honest: I won't. Anything that involves getting dressed, out of the house, down two flights of steps, and driving or walking somewhere... it won't get done. So let's talk about stuff I'm likely to actually do.") I was wearing my "Grumpy Old Woman" t-shirt, just for his benefit. Eric and I had been investigating treadmills, and the physio agreed that using one was an excellent idea, especially after I assured him that I DO ride my exercise bicycle, because it's right there next to my desk. Last week the local Sports Power store (where I had bought the bicycle and some weights and various other odds and ends over the past few years) had not had in stock the treadmill that I was interested in, but some arrived yesterday, so we went in and bought one. The ever-helpful Wayne from Sports Power delivered it later in the afternoon and unpacked, assembled, and tested it. My room is now rather crowded, though fortunately the treadmill will fold up to free up a bit of floor space if needed. Here are some photos.

Document Freedom Day

A news release from the folks behind Document Freedom Day (DFD) says that 26 March is "a global day for Document Liberation with grassroots action for promotion of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general. The DFD was initiated and is supported by a group of organisations and companies, including, but not limited to the Free Software Foundation Europe, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Inc." If you'd like to advertise this event, the DFD website has some nice banners and wallpaper.

In addition, for those particuarly interested in promoting ODF (OpenDocument Format), Pete Harlow has produced a banner ad (see below) and a set of wallpapers for various screen resolutions. http://www.catnip.co.uk/ads/banners/addfdm03.png http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/thumbodfdfd001.jpg http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-800x600.png http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-800x600.jpg http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1024x768.png http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1024x768.jpg http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1280x1024.png http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1280x1024.jpg http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1600x1200.png http://www.catnip.co.uk/wallpaper/odfdfd001-1600x1200.jpg

Rain, rain, more rain

The wet and windy weather returned overnight, after a few days of intermittent rain while the storm went south 150 km and caused major flooding in Mackay. Then the storm turned around and came back to us last night. Actually, there's been lots of rain all up the coast and all the usual roads are flooded (again), so the truck with the Saturday newspapers couldn't get through and AFAIK flights in and out of the airport were cancelled (perhaps because people couldn't get to or from the airport, or perhaps because the runway needed repair after water damage earlier in the week). The good news is the electricity has stayed on, except for one 45-minute outage a few days ago. Our backup power supply kept the internet connection working and of course the laptop kept going, so I just carried on working. The phrase "surfing the Internet" takes on a new meaning when the weather's like this. Down in Mackay, they're cleaning up the mess. People are warned to stay out of the floodwaters because of the danger of crocodiles.

More wild wet season weather

Heavy rain and wind overnight on the 12th tossed yachts onto the beach and the rocks, here in Airlie Beach and at several other places on the coast and in the islands. Eric didn't take the camera out into the rain when he went on a futile quest for the morning newspaper (the truck had been delayed by the weather), but he said he counted at least 14 yachts on shore, most of them looking decidedly the worse for wear -- and that's just in the 500 metres of our town. This picture is taken a bit further along the coast towards Cannonvale. The newspapers did get here later in the morning, but then the roads north and south were cut by floods, as is usual folllowing heavy rain; this includes the road to the airport. We're on high ground and doing fine. Haven't heard if more landslides have occurred in the area, or how many trees are down. So far the electricity has stayed on. We actually had surf on Wednesday morning! Only a few feet high (perhaps as much as two metres?), but that's pretty exciting given that our "surf" is normally only a few inches high. People were out on surfboards. Today (Thursday) Eric and I walked along the beach and photographed some of the damaged boats. An album with a selection of photos is here: http://avalook.com/airliebeach/airlie0802/

A deadline met!

Around a year ago I was invited to join a group of people writing a book, to which each of us is contributing one chapter. I was (and am) enthusiastic because the contributors (most of whom I know, at least professionally) are encouraged to "write in a lively style, deliver lots of interesting content, introduce and analyze intriguing trends and problems, take a chance and prognosticate". Cool! Permission to be opinionated! The deadline for submission of the first drafts is the end of February. My goal was to have mine done by the first week in February. Today I sent it off to the book's editor. No doubt I'll need to do extensive revisions after receiving the editor's comments, but for now I'm heaving a sigh of relief. It's been fun, and I love writing books, but I find the process very time-consuming and mentally tiring.

Woman with attitude—and weights

While following links from another blog, I discovered a fascinating website done by a Canadian woman, Krista Scott-Dixon, who is into weight training and some martial arts, among other things. The weight training section starts here. It's full of interesting info and rants about various topics, and there's a blog. The section of the site about her was interesting reading, too. For about 10 years Krista was an academic (in women's studies), so the "academientia" section of the site includes items like her PhD thesis: "From webgrrls to digitaleve: the gendered practice of women's technology work and organization" (2002). She's also published a book titled "Doing IT: women working in information technology" (2004). Krista has an amusing writing style, and lots of attitude! I'd love to meet her. Maybe when I next visit Toronto...

Rain continues

Heavy rain fell again overnight. In anticipation, the shops damaged yesterday were sandbagged against further flooding. (See photo.) Today we had some breaks in the weather, though the clouds remained and the rain returned in mid-afternoon. The Bruce Highway north and south of Proserpine reopened, but the road from here to the highway was still closed the last time I checked. Neither the mail nor the newspapers arrived in the morning; Eric hasn't gone out again to see if they came in later. Update: The roads are all apparently open, and I just phoned the newsagent who says the papers arrived around lunchtime. Now to brave the rain and go collect one!

A good old-fashioned wet season?

Yesterday and today have featured rain, lots of rain. A weather pattern centred on our immediate area has dumped over 350mm (14 inches) of rain on us, and it's still continuing. Last night a huge amount of runoff down a creek that runs under the main street of town met a high tide and spilled up through the drains, washing a load of mud against one of the buildings on the downhill side of a low spot in the road and breaking windows. The news reports said the supermarket was flooded, but in fact it was the chemist shop at the other end of the building, with the travel agency next door suffering too. Eric went out during a break in the rain around 9AM and took some photos, some of which are below. Meanwhile, the excavation at the site of the new marina has turned into a lake. The first photo below was taken on 5 January, just before the workers came back from their end-of-year break. Since then they have deepened and widened some of the excavation. Today they moved some of their equipment to higher ground and then presumably had the day off.

Upgrade of three websites to WordPress 2.3.2

I have now upgraded three more websites to WordPress 2.3.2, so they are all done now. This time I made no mistakes in the sequence of work, so each upgrade went fairly quickly—but in each case I forgot (despite my notes) at least one tweak until I noticed that the site wasn't displaying quite right and realised that I had forgotten to activate a plug-in or replace a file in the theme or do something equally trivial.

More travel photo albums

I've been using JAlbum to put together digital photos albums for a bit over a year now. I started with a fairly simple design for the album from my trip to Europe and used the same design (with colour changes) for several Australian trips. In the meantime, JAlbum (a free, open-source program, written in Java, that runs on Linux, Mac and Windows) has gone through several upgrades, and so have the album themes. A few weeks ago I was playing around with the latest iteration of the basic Chameleon theme and found a combination of options (including colour scheme) that appealed to me. So I'm now using that theme for some of the albums from our 2004 around-Australian trip. The first few albums from that trip are still in the old theme; I'll update them to the new theme later. The first of the new-theme albums is from the flight I took over the Kimberley from Kununurra; it starts here.

Upgrade of one website to WordPress 2.3.2

Today I upgraded my Taming OpenOffice.org website from WordPress 2.2.1 to 2.3.2. I misunderstood some of the instructions, and ended up spending far more time than I should have in recovering from my mistakes. Eventually I succeeded in getting everything working, and I now have notes to help me avoid making the same mistakes next time. Only 3 websites to go!

New shirts for Eric

Eric likes bright tropical shirts, but only in cotton. Suitable shirts are hard to find around here (the bright ones are usually synthetic fabrics), so on the rare occasions that we're in a town where we can find a store with a good range of fabrics, we look for suitable ones. On the last trip to Mackay, we stopped in at Spotlight, where Eric found five fabrics that caught his eye (and that I approved of). I haven't done any serious sewing for years, but I did get a new sewing machine a year or so ago, so I got to work and have now produced three shirts. Here is Eric modelling them. The first one looks very Christmas-like in red and green, but the green bits are coconut palms. My favourite is the last one, with the dark blue.

My editors' website was hacked!

Today I discovered that my technical editors' website had been hacked sometimes in the past few days. All my pages got turned into blog posts, and a bunch of spam sites were listed on the blogroll. <sigh> Damage control time! At least everything appeared to be there, even if it was goofed up. I fixed the blogroll easily, and then figured out how to edit the database and change the designation of the pages from "post" back to "page". Fortunately, Dreamhost provides easy access to tools for editing the database. The hardest part was remembering my login name and password combination for the database (different from the FTP login).

Marina construction update

We've had a lot of rain this week as well as king tides, so the holes dug in the bay are full of water, despite the best efforts of some heavy-duty pumps to keep up. The section they've been building up in preparation for construction has some large, but not deep, puddles. Good thing all the digging equipment had been brought in to high ground, or a lot of it would be well underwater by now.

Christmas events

Eric and I had a pleasant but uneventful Christmas as home, indoors with the air-conditioning on because it was over 30C and very humid on both the 25th and 26th. I had cooked half a turkey (all that will fit in my tiny oven) on the 24th, so we had a nice meal instead of our usual snacks. I even put a tablecloth on the table for the occasion. ;-) On Thursday rain started before dawn, and continued for two days with few breaks. We recorded more than 150mm here, but we know it was more because overnight the rain gauge overflowed. The big hole that's been dug in the bay below us filled up with muddy runoff water and is now a lake, despite the best efforts of several large industrial pumps. Good thing the workers brought all of their diggers and trucks in to high ground before they left for the Christmas break; otherwise, several would be well submerged by now. I'm hoping to put some photos on this blog soon. Also on Thursday, my oven stopped working. Good timing, waiting until after the turkey was cooked! The top burners still work fine, but the oven doesn't heat. Fortunately there is a similar oven in Eric's kitchen, so we can use it if we need to. We think the problem is a broken switch, but as the oven is 10 years old and was cheap to begin with, I won't even investigate whether it can be fixed; I'm glad to have an excuse to buy a new one.

Recent reading

I've been catching up a bit on my reading of science fiction. Lately I've been working my way through several volumes of collected "best of the year" books. Yesterday and today's reading was the "Year's Best SF 8" collection, edited by David Hartwell. The stories were published in 2002. I was mildly surprised that I enjoyed (or at least found interesting) most of them; often I don't. One of the stories really made me laugh: Robert Onopa's "Geropods", first published in F&SF. I loved the premise; a geropod is a legal entity that constitutes a full human being: "any group of infirm old people whose combined physical and mental capacities constitute the powers of a single, competent individual is collectively entitled to act as an individual". So a group of men "escape" from a nursing home (to which some, if not all, of them have been involuntarily committed) by forming a geropod and hiring a younger man with a large vehicle to drive them around. Their original purpose was to get even with the son-in-law of one of the members of the group, who had got the older man been declared incompetent and taken over control of his assets; but during their adventures, they meet another geropod ("babes!") and form some friendships... for a 14-page story, there was a lot in it.

Marina construction update

After working feverishly the past few days to tidy up the flat area visible in this photo, it looks like the construction crew will be taking the usual two-week Christmas break, because they've lined all of their equipment up near the road, presumably so the security people can keep an eye on it more easily.

Marina construction update

This photo shows most of the earthmoving equipment digging out what will eventually be the yacht harbour of the marina. Six of the seven dump trucks are visible, along with diggers, graders, and other equipment. Much of the dirt is being moved to this spot, which will eventually have a hotel and other buildings constructed on it.

All's well with the new hip joints

Yesterday I saw the orthopedic surgeon for a 5-week checkup on my right hip. He said I am doing very well and now have no restrictions on what I am allowed to do (except "no jumping, running, or other impact stress on the hips" for the rest of my life). Mainly my task now is to do as much walking and other exercise as possible, to strengthen the leg muscles on the right side, and then to get both legs back to my former level of fitness. He gave me another exercise to do, to help me stop limping when I walk.

I love the iPod Touch

Eric recently bought an iPod Touch. I didn't think I would like it at all, but I love it! I thought it would be really difficult to read things on the screen, but it does such cool things with the display of web pages that they are actually readable, and Google has a "Google mobile" mode that makes using Gmail easy and even Google Docs are not bad. It connects by wifi to the internet. Typing is tedious (though not nearly as bad as typing on a the keypad of a typical mobile phone), but the rest of it is fantastic. I haven't tried to watch a movie on it, but then I almost never watch movies at all. And I rarely listen to music, so the ubiquitous "music everywhere" aspects of an iPod have never interested me. But the possibility of doing my email and websurfing on this thing on my travels, instead of lugging along a laptop computer (unless I expect to want or need to do a lot of typing), are most tempting. (The iPhone isn't available in Australia yet.)

Brats: Our Journey Home

I recently bought a documentary film titled Brats: Our Journey Home. It's about growing up as an American "military brat". It was totally fascinating (to me). Some of the topics reminded me of things I had long forgotten about life on a military base and in a military family; others I remembered all too well. The main point of the film was the effects of our childhood on us "brats" as adults and our outlook on life and our ways of coping and relating to people and work and life in general, in comparison to the general population. I had worked out long ago for myself most of what they said, but it was interesting to learn that some of my experiences and reactions were more general than I had previously thought.

Marina construction update

On the 30th and the 1st we had some real gully-washer thunderstorms: about 50mm (2 inches) of rain in less than half an hour each time. The next day, the diggers, trucks, graders, and other construction equipment in the marina area were busily moving more tons of dirt into the extensive puddles left by the weekend's rains. I've been mildly disappointed that so far no equipment seems to have got bogged in the mud, as it's quite entertaining to watch them extricating bogged items. Here are some photos of the latest stage of work.

Medical progress

Today I walked down and up 15 steps without using either crutch or cane (though holding on to the railing with one hand), and putting only one foot on each step in the normal manner (instead of putting one foot on the step and then putting the other foot on the same step. Thus I leaped several stages of recovery in one bound! Incredible. I'm still limping/lurching a bit as I walk (apparently due to tight muscles on the right leg) but that seems to be improving daily too. I feel about 10 years younger than I did a few months ago.

Five years with OpenOffice.org!

I just realised that I joined the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project five years ago. I got my first copy of OOo (1.0.1) in late August 2002 and joined the Documentation list on 4 December of that year, while working on what was to become my first self-published book on the topic (Taming OpenOffice.org). In mid-2003 I met Daniel Carrera online and joined the OOoAuthors project (producing user documentation for OOo), and in September 2003 Daniel recruited me as lead editor for OOoAuthors, where I've been volunteering ever since. Wow! How times flies. It is time for me to move on from OOo to something else. I've become somewhat bored with the routine, even though I'm also very happy with the way things have been going at OOo. Over the past 6 months, the new team at OOo Documentation seem to be embracing the resources at OOoAuthors (people, website and user guides) with enthusiasm, and several grass-roots initiatives (for example the wiki and a new user forum) have really taken off. So I feel I can now leave and things will keep chugging along well without me... though I am disappointed that I never managed to get a Calc Guide finished (I just don't know enough to write all the missing bits myself, like I did with Writer). So I'm telling both OOoAuthors and the OOo Documentation Project that I'll be winding down my activities by the end of 2007. I plan to continue producing the printed copies of OOoAuthors books through Lulu.com in my role as publisher at Friends of OpenDocument Inc. Perhaps I'll have time to expand those publishing activities to include books on other software or even translations of the existing books—of course that depends on someone writing the books or providing the translations.

A bird comes to visit

A lot of birds visit our balcony. Mostly they are the common local birds like cockatoos and lorikeets, but occasionally something unusual stops by. I must get out the bird book and try to identify this one. Two of them turned up early one evening and stayed long enough for us to take photos, most of which turned out badly.

New Avalook website goes live

Although many pages of my Australian travel website (Avalook) have yet to be moved into WordPress, I've made the site live. Pages that have been updated are in the new (WordPress) style, and the others are still visible but in the previous (home-grown) style. I decided that if I waited until I had moved all the pages into Wordpress, the new site would never go live... or at least not for another year or more... not least because I'm more interested in getting some photo albums done and online too.

Medical costs

I saw the full bill from the hospital (charged to my medical fund) for the right hip operation: just under $12,500. That includes the 4-night hospital stay, operating theatre fees, and the implant itself, but doesn't include the surgeon's and anaesthetists' fees (approx another $5,000, most of which is also covered by my medical fund). Presumably the other hip cost about the same except for one extra day in hospital. I suspect this is somewhat less than a comparable operation would cost in the USA.

Medical progress

The staples were removed yesterday from the incision in my leg, using a staple puller much like those I'm familiar with from business offices. The surgeon says I can pretty much do whatever I want instead of sticking to the list of restrictions on activities (designed for the "average patient"). The fact that I walked into his office without using any crutch or cane, 10 days after the operation, probably didn't hurt my case any. Mind you, my "walk" at the moment has a fair amount of stagger and lurch in it, but that should improve rapidly. The only rule is: if it hurts, stop doing it. Sitting at the keyboard for any length of time makes my hip ache (not bad, but noticeable), so I'm using that as an excuse to spend more time in my recliner chair reading novels. I continue to have very little pain (in contrast to the first operation), other than a brief bout on Wednesday night which succumbed to high-strength prescription painkillers and has not returned.

Marina construction update

More earth movement. I wonder how many tonnes are being shifted? Much of the construction site looks to me like an open-cut mine, including the small mining trucks being used to shift the dirt.

More hip hooray!

On 6 November I had my right hip replaced. The surgeon, hospital, and device used were the same as for the left hip, but the two experiences were otherwise very different. The second seems to have taken place in an alternate universe to the first... one that for the most part I found much more to my liking. The anaesthetist was a different person and he took a different approach, using different drugs. Probably this was his standard approach, but the choice may have been influenced by the complaints I had made about inadequate pain relief following the first operation. I remained in the recovery room for an hour or more and was returned to my room (where Eric was waiting) around 6 pm., having gone in to pre-op around 1:30. I felt okay but very spacey. Over the next 12 hours I experienced some quite entertaining hallucinations, mainly of the parts of the room moving around in several dimensions whenever I tried to focus on some­thing. The effect was most pronounced when I looked at my travel clock to see what time it was; the clock face would strobe forward and back so it was impossible to focus on. Other than that, I felt fine. One thing that had con­cerned me was the possibility of a repeat of the severe pain I’d had on getting my own blood transfused back into me. The surgeon avoided this possibility by doing the transfusion during the operation itself. For the first time in my life (except perhaps as a very small child), I reacted to the anaesthetic drugs by being unable to keep any food down. Most disconcerting! Normally I can eat soon after waking up, with no ill effects. I found it quite odd that I felt perfectly fine otherwise. The next day, after receiving an infusion (through the drip) of some anti-vomiting drug, I was able to eat. I felt little pain during the day or that night (unlike after the previous operation). The physiotherapist had me up and walking in place that afternoon. On Thursday morning, after the surgeon had inspected me, a nurse removed the drains and I went into the shower (using the crutches, not the walker) and demonstrated that I could get around on the crutches just fine. The physiotherapist rewarded my progress by having me practice going up and down a step 10 times. In the evening I went for a walk around the hospital corridors and met another of my surgeon's patients: a man who’d had a knee replacement operation on Monday. He said he was having both hips and both knees replaced, at about three-month intervals: right hip 3 months ago, left knee this week, right knee in January, left hip 3 months after that. He was making a good pace and said that by the next day he thought he wouldn’t need the crutches at all. Saturday the dressing was removed from the incision and we drove home. I had no problem getting into the car, despite the passenger seat being on the wrong side for putting my good leg in first. I was still experiencing a remarkable lack of pain. I almost immedi­ately stopped needing two crutches and was getting around fine on one... and in some cases (in the kitchen or the bathroom) not using a crutch at all.

Grumpy old woman shirt

I've been trying to find a "Grumpy Old Woman" t-shirt, but have been able to find only "Grumpy Old Man". The GOW website has a selection of shirts, but none of them say "Grumpy Old Woman". So, when Eric spotted GOM shirts going for a low price, he bought two of them for me. I then got a bottle of white fabric paint and edited the writing on the shirt. Here is the result. (I'm taking it with me to the hospital to amuse the nurses.)

Mobile phone as modem

One goal I had for my new mobile phone was to be able to use it as a modem to connect the computer to the internet using Bluetooth under Ubuntu. It was easy to get the phone and the computer to recognise each other's existence, but I was stumped on the next step. So I asked for help on the Australian Ubuntu users' list and several people answered, each giving me a different piece of the puzzle: one helped me get the Bluetooth connection working, one gave me a set of scripts to do the dialing, and one had some other hints and tips to make my life easier. I don't know what age group(s) these guys are in, but I asked them to explain how to do things "like you would explain it to your grandmother" and they did a fine job, even the one who started out talking in incomprehensible (to me) geek-speak. I followed their instructions carefully and on my first test -- IT WORKED! I won't actually use the mobile phone as a modem except as a last resort, because of the costs involved and its slower speed compared to our home broadband connection, though the phone company does have a monthly data plan I can sign up for at times when I expect to be using it a lot (like next year's planned outback expedition).

Email on mobile phone

I now have email working to and from my mobile phone, but only through an Australian email address that I almost never use. Of course I can forward other addresses to that one if I want to check all my mail using my phone while I'm in hospital or travelling without the computer. In theory I can also read web pages on the phone itself, but I'd have to be fairly desperate to try that on such a small screen. Next step is to get the phone working as a modem for the computer, for use in remote parts of the country when I can't find some other connection.

Ubuntu upgrade to Gutsy (7.10)

I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon") last night. OpenOffice.org and Thunderbird both stopped working. Probably not coincidentally, those are the two programs where I had been using versions that I self-installed (because I wanted a more recent one than was in the repository). Spent some time solving those problems. I installed Thunderbird from the repository and it works, so that's good. OpenOffice.org was more of a problem. Previously both my self-installed OOo and the one that came with Ubuntu worked; after the Ubuntu upgrade both versions of OOo crashed continuously and in the same way. A bit of research revealed that many people are having the same problem, but the cures vary a bit. I finally uninstalled both versions of OOo and reinstalled the one from the repository, after which that one worked fine. It's not ideal for my work writing documentation, because the icon set is different from the standard OOo set, but that's of minor importance because someone else is now redoing all the screen captures in a consistent style for the OOoAuthors books. Other than those problems (now solved), everything seems to work okay. I checked things like the DVD player to make sure it hadn't also broken, but it was fine.

New mobile phone

I got a new mobile phone. I didn't want one, but the CDMA phone system here is being replaced early in 2008 by something called NextG (for Next Generation: how Star Trek-ish!) so I had to get a different handset. I've been putting off getting one until the phone company offered me both an acceptable phone (the early models didn't have various features I wanted) and an inducement that appealed to me. A month or two ago they started offering a Nokia 6120classic phone with the Symbian operating system and all the features I wanted (as well as lots of other features of no interest to me). This week I received their latest inducement offer: $100 credit on my phone bill, so I decided to go ahead and make the switch. The phone has more features than many of my former computers and my cameras. I'm sure I'll never use most of them! I spent some time with the instruction book, learning a few of the most-needed features.

Expatriates voting in US elections

I just learned that I can vote in the US Federal elections next year! I had always thought that I couldn't, but apparently the law was changed a few years ago. Now Americans living temporarily or permanently abroad can claim as their "voting residence" the state in which they last voted in the US, whether or not they ever intend to return to that state, or have any other connection to it (property, business, etc), and registering to vote does NOT carry any obligation to file a tax return in that state. This information was sent to me in a note from the "Voting Assistance Officer" at the US Consulate in Sydney, which referred me to the Federal Voting Assistance Program's website. It's really interesting how things have changed: for many years I got the distinct impression that the US government actively made it difficult for people to vote if they lived abroad; now they are actively encouraging and helping people. I haven't decided yet whether to register or not. Meanwhile, a date for the Australian federal election has finally been announced: 24 November. The campaign has been going on unofficially for several months now, so it's good to finally have a date set. The "news" during election campaigns is even more boring and tedious than usual.

Marina construction update

Vast amounts of digging and moving of dirt is going on.

Hip + related medical stuff

Trip to Mackay today: the surgeon says I'm doing very well. I walked in without using a cane or crutch, so I suppose that helped. We filled out the paperwork for the next operation, so that's all organised for 6 November. This time we'll stockpile only 2 units of blood instead of 3, and the surgeon has agreed that unless I really, really need the blood, I won't get it back (because of the bad reaction I had last time). He thinks I might have had a reaction to one of the additives; the risk of another bad reaction isn't worth it for a routine transfusion. I had gone in prepared to argue that point rather strongly, but I'm very glad that I didn't need to. I also mentioned the muscle cramps I've been having intermittently in the operated leg, and he said (a) that's normal and (b) his recommended treatment is to drink tonic water, the kind with quinine in it (he said many brands remove the quinine, so I need to check the label). I said "I suppose I shouldn't be too generous with the gin" and he laughed. Lastly, I asked about the edema in my left knee and he said (a) that's normal, (b) be patient as it will eventually go away and (c) pressure stockings might help. We had quite a long chat about this and that, because his next appointment had cancelled so he had plenty of time. For example, we talked about how much people differ in their reactions to chemicals. He said he had always disbelieved the idea that food dyes caused behavioural problems in children -- until one of his own children showed unmistakable symptoms that could be correlated precisely with comsuming certain processed foods and soft drinks. His other child shows no symptoms whatsoever from eating or drinking the same items. Afterwards Eric and I stopped at the blood bank to drop off paperwork, and I chatted with the head nurse there about my reaction to the transfusion last time. She showed us the list of additives used in their blood storage packets; Eric will be looking them up on the Internet later. After that, we went to the store in Mackay that sells Apple computers, so Eric could look at the new 24-inch iMac. It has a shiny, very reflective screen, which he doesn't think he'll like.

Marina construction update

Most of the water has now been pumped out of the enclosed area and the mud is drying. As these photos show, digging equipment is removing the mud from some areas and dumping it in other parts of the site. Under the gray mud (which varies in depth) is a layer of clay or other (brown) dirt, which is being used to construct access roads (probably temporary). Lots of dust and noise is coming from this work. It's slightly better than the pounding noises when the metal barriers were being hammered into the dirt, but the beep-beep-beep of the backup warning signals on the trucks and other equipment is seriously tedious.

Technical editors' website redesigned

After months of off-and-on work on my editors' website (setting it up in WordPress), I've finally got it to the point that I'm ready to reveal it to the world. And so I have! http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/ The design (template) breaks in Internet Explorer. I don't have the time or energy to figure out how to fix that. I'm no longer doing this professionally, or with a view to attracting clients, so I've decided to be bloody-minded about it. I put a note on the first page that says "get a browser that supports standards". Some pages are out of date, so I still have a lot of maintenance work to do, but at least the major conversion work is done... except for the old newsletters, which will gradually be converted or absorbed into the main site.

Marina construction update

Here are some recent photos of the marina construction going on below us. For some weeks the construction site has resembled an open-cut mine, which in a way it is. The area to be deepened has been enclosed and the water is being pumped out. Digging equipment and trucks (exactly like those used at open-cut coal mines and other mines) are trans­ferring mud, dirt, and rocks from one area to another that is being built up for eventual use as housing, a resort, a boat terminal, and so on. The dust and noise are quite impressive. This sequence goes from left to right across the bay.

Hip: staples out, all well

Eric drove me to Mackay yesterday to have the surgeon remove the 17 impressive-large staples from my leg. His camera failed at the critical moment, so I don't have any photos of the instruments used, but they were a set of needle-nosed wire snips (almost identical to the ones Eric uses for electronic work) and tweezers. The surgeon said all is going very well and I can have the other hip done whenever I want. We agreed on November 6th, assuming all is still well at my next checkup on October 4th. I'm using only one crutch now, and getting around the apartment quite well, albeit very slowly. Now I can carry my own cup of tea, or plate of dinner, from the kitchen to the table. I'm trying to walk around as much as possible, as well as doing the set of exercises the physio gave me, to strengthen the leg as much as possible. Unfortunately, the pain in the other leg is hampering these efforts a bit. We discovered that the before-and-after x-rays were on CD as well as film, so here are some images. Before: After:

Hip hooray!

Had the operation on 27 August as scheduled. Arrived at the hospital at 10:30, filled out paperwork, showered, donned one of those fetching hospital gowns (and a reasonable bathrobe), and sat around waiting for quite awhile after unpacking a bit in my assigned room. At around 1:30 pm I was wheeled away, bed and all, to pre-op, where I remained for only a few minutes before being taken in to the operating theatre. I was returned to my room around 5:30 p.m., more than an hour later than expected. The surgeon explained later that the x-rays had shown I needed a size 1 hip socket replacement. However I actually needed a size 0, the smallest one. I assume they had to get one from stocks and sterilise it before finishing the operation. I was fully awake, and Eric says I was showing good spirit on my return, despite a drip, two drains, a catheter, a pressure cuff on each lower leg (squeezing at half-minute intervals), an oxygen tube in my nose, and a heap of monitor gear connected to me. I wasn't exactly comfortable, but neither was there much pain. However, when the nurses started transfusing my own blood back into me around 9 p.m., I suddenly had considerable pain in my hand. Indeed, I let out an involuntary shriek that probably could be heard through the entire hospital. Opinions varied on what the problem was, so everyone spent some time adjusting the drip rate, adjusting the position of my hand, and so on. The only thing that helped was a slow drip rate (55 ml/hour max). Unfortunately, that wasn’t one of the choices: a rate of 150ml/hr was required to get all the blood into me before it warmed up to the point where it had to be discarded. Eventually a shot of morphine reduced the pain to a tolerable level and they managed to get two units of my own blood into me. In the morning I felt fairly good, all things considered. The physiotherapist arrived in the afternoon to get me standing and then walking in place. Apart from an incident on the second night when I had to argue rather vehemently with the nursing staff for adequate pain relief, the staff were friendly, helpful, and at times quite amusing. The food ranged from good to excellent. I had a private room. It’s mainly a day surgery; few patients remain overnight and the place is remarkably quiet. The surgeon visited several times a day (his office was at one end of the corridor, and the operating theatres were at the other end). Almost as soon as I was detached from an amazing amount of postoperative torture devices, and less than 48 hours after the operation, I was doing laps around the hospital hallways on crutches and practicing stair-climbing. I got home today. I'm getting around on the crutches well, and didn't have any trouble getting up the 35 steps from the carpark to the apartment (veeery slowly). I'm allowed to stop using two crutches or even one crutch as soon as I feel confident that I don't need them. BTW, the crutches are a type called "Canadian" and they are very comfortable to use, with a moulded hand grip.

More hip problems

Ten days ago my left leg took a turn for the worse (nerve pinch in hip, apparently) and Hurts Like Hell much of the time, despite various medical treatments and codeine tablets (fortunately available without a prescription here in Australia). I've been spending most of my time lying in bed, although that isn't always an improvement over sitting up. Eric has reorganized my desk so I can lie in a recliner chair, type, and use the big monitor. The distraction of working is good for me, though the codeine makes my brain fuzzy at times. Monday we went to Mackay for the first round of blood collection (in prep for the op). To my surprise and relief, riding in the car was less uncomfortable than sitting in any of my chairs (or lying in bed) at home! So I made it there and back, and the bloodletting went okay (no dizziness or whatever, not that I expected any). I've phoned the surgeon's office and suggested that, given the change in my left leg, I'd like to have that hip done first. I have an appointment with him next Monday (when I go to Mackay for the second blood collection) to discuss this and fill in some more paperwork.

Hip surgery plans

I saw the surgeon today and liked both him and the private hospital. He confirmed that both hips need replacement, and opined that the pain in the left knee is probably caused by problems in the left hip, so most likely replacing that hip would fix the knee as well. I liked the surgeon: he was very straightforward, no nonsense, but pleasant. Not a hint of "talking down" to me, and answered questions with what I considered an appropriate level of technicality (not too much nor too little). And there was no delay getting in to see him at the time of my appointment -- somewhat unusual in my experience with specialists. The hospital is small and does mostly day surgery. Most of the 25 or 30 rooms are private. It does not have any cafeteria or food service other than what the hospital provides, so Eric will have to pack a lunch when he comes to visit. I am having the first operation (on the right hip) on Monday, 27 August (5 weeks from today), and the date for the other one will be decided later. I may be able to have that 2-3 months after the first, depending on how quickly I recover. I am going to be very impatient for the next 5 weeks to pass! One reason that I can't have the first operation sooner is that they want to stockpile 3 units of my own blood to use in transfusions during the operation, and I can only give 1 unit each week. This means Eric will have to drive me to Mackay (2 hours each way) one day a week for the 3 weeks before the operation, to have blood taken. Unfortunately there are no facilities closer to home to handle this type of blood donation. I received a packet of information from the company that produces the replacement hip. This info included a DVD of post-surgery exercises, which I am still going through, and a credit-card-sized card with the patient's and surgeon's names, date of operation, etc, for me to keep in my wallet to show to security people at airports and other checkpoints. Eric and I stayed Sunday night with friends in Mackay. Turns out that K had built the surgeon's swimming pool last year. Small town!

More laptop progress

Today I got the DVD player working, using VLC. This involved a bit of mucking around, since some of the necessary software isn't hosted (for legal reasons) on the Ubuntu website. Once I found the (very good) instructions, which included where to find the s/w (on a site called Medibuntu.sos-sts.com, for "Media, Entertainment, and Distractions in Ubuntu"), the rest was easy. Not that I watch DVDs very often, but it's nice to know I can. I had not managed to get the DVD player working under the earlier version of Ubuntu, but that might just be that I didn't put enough effort into finding what I needed (I never found Medibunt before today).

New laptop

I wasn't going to buy a new laptop, really I wasn't. But -- as has happened before -- Dell had a sale of just what I wanted, so I gave in and purchased both a laptop (much smaller than my others) and a new monitor (much larger than my other one). The laptop is an XPS M1210, relatively lightweight but with all sorts of goodies on it, some of which may be more challenging to get working under Linux than others. The monitor is a 24" one with lots of USB and other ports. Later I'll look up the specs or post a link for those of you who want to know all the technical details. I repartitioned the hard drive for dual-boot and a shared partition with Windows, installed Ubuntu 7.04, installed the Nvidia driver for Ubuntu, installed the printer, and got the big monitor working with it (as the main monitor, not a second monitor; it came right up when I installed the Nvidia driver). Most of my data files have been copied over, though there are a few things still to set up (shared Thunderbird files, for example). I'm delighted to report that Ubuntu's installation from the desktop CD has improved with each release, and several things that I previously had to do manually are now handled by the installer -- like enabling the wireless networking (it was detected like the ethernet and just worked, no drama), switching between wireless and ethernet (automatic), mounting the shared drive (no more manual editing of fstab!), and some other things that I forget. It was a good distro for newbies before, but now it's even better -- I feel much more confident now that I can hand a CD to someone (except the totally clueless) and they would be able to install it successfully without assistance.

Cold weather

We just had the coldest June day on record, or something like that. Cold, here in the tropics, is of course relative (a Minnesotan would laugh), but the high was somewhere around 15C and it rained off and on too. Every store in the area sold out of space heaters several days ago (except for some large, expensive ones) -- this was a "hot" topic on the local evening news. It's not too bad indoors, but I am wearing my outdoor jacket and my hiking boots as well as long pants and several layers of shirts and sweatshirts. I've dug out every blanket and quilt I can find and put them on the bed; good thing we have cold-night camping gear! I even managed to find in my hoard of stuff a long-sleeved, warm nightgown, though if this keeps up I may opt for sweatshirt-and-sweatpants in lieu of winter pajamas.

Australian National Science Fiction Convention

Eric and I flew to Melbourne on 6 June, a few days before the Australian National Science Fiction Convention being held there over the Queens Birthday weekend of 8-10 June. We had a great time catching up with old friends, attending book launches by old and new friends, and wandering around part of Melbourne. One night I gave a demonstration of OpenOffice.org to the Victorian group of the ASTC (Australian Society for Technical Communication). In the process of answering some questions, I discovered some changes in the user interface that I hadn't noticed before. (I've only been using v2.2 for 10 days or so.) Fortunately they were not changes that I should have written about in the books I had just published. Some days I could walk reasonably comfortably, but other days I couldn't (arthritis). I have an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon next month to discuss surgery, but in the meantime walking is not fun. However, we did wander around the city a bit and discovered a small museum in an old (historic) building that had been preserved when a new modern shopping centre was built around it. In the museum was a display that I had never seen before, but Eric says he saw something similar in the movie Minority Report. Instead of a touch screen, it had an area in front of the display where you waved your hand to point at choices (hold for a few seconds to activate the choice) or move sliders around on the display. It didn't seem to work very well (or maybe I was too quick in my movements or something), but in general it was very cool and fun to play with. I also got to the Birkenstock store and bought a pair of sandals with a heel strap, to supplement the ones I have that don't have a strap. The latter are great for indoors, but I can't drive or walk any distance in them because they often slip off. I learned that I could send my old sandals to Melbourne for repair or to have the sole replaced when the tread is too worn. These shoes cost a lot, but they seem to last forever, and their arch support is very good (a requirement for me). We stayed at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on Lonsdale Street, not far from the convention hotel, the Rydges. The hotel room had broadband (at a price), so I used it a bit. As is typical of too many hotels, the room had very few electrical outlets, and those few were poorly located. Even though there was a desk with a decent lamp and an ethernet cable, it had no spare electrical outlets anywhere nearby; the only ones were behind the bed, which is along a different wall, some distance away. Considering that everyone these days wants to charge a mobile phone (if not a laptop computer), this is definitely user-unfriendly! I could have unplugged the lamp to plug in the laptop, but I didn't want to be hassled with climbing under the desk all the time. So Eric bought a cheap 4-outlet powerboard from an office-supply place at the corner. We usually bring a powerboard with us, but this time we forgot.