Trip to Cairns and Port Douglas

We just got back from our first longish trip in the new car, and the first longish trip in any car since my hip operations 18 months ago. We went up to coast to Cairns and Port Douglas and back again. We been told by a lot of people that good deals on hotels could be had, as the whole region is suffering from lack of tourists (cost of petrol is one reason; cuts in airline services is another), and so it proved when I checked on my favourite online booking site, Wotif. We left on Monday, 28 July, driving only as far as Townsville (300 km). The drive was very good: beautiful weather, and very little traffic on the road. The independent truck drivers are said to be on strike, so instead of the usual steady stream of semi-trailers, we saw about 6 in 4 hours. The main highway is two-lane most of the way (one lane in each direction), and the road surface is often in poor repair, so the lack of trucks was most pleasant. We did a bit of shopping and checked out a retirement resort (Carlyle Gardens) in Townsville that looks much like Panorama City in Lacey, Washington (where my parents lived): about the same size (number of residents), same sort of facilities and activities, and so on. I've been doing some internet research for a couple of years, but this is the first time we've actually gone to inspect one of these resorts. Eric's not keen, but he knows that one of these years we'll probably have to move somewhere for medical reasons, so he's willing to look at places that might suit us. Their website, by the way, is a bit out of date; it doesn't show the large new section that is under construction. We'll be returning for a closer look on their open day in September. We had a great drive up the coast, stopping briefly at Paronella Park, a mostly-ruined place with a fascinating history as a popular tourist destination in the 1930s and 1940s. We really enjoyed our 3 days in Cairns. We stayed three nights in a 5-star hotel (Cairns International) for about the cost of our usual 3.5 star motels. The weather was beautiful, so we walked around quite a lot (more than I've done for two years; very tiring, but definitely good for me). We ate in one of our favourite seafood restaurants (Barnacle Bills), among other places. Trips to the reef and rainforest are no novelty for us, so we didn't do any of that. Goofing off, and not accessing the internet, makes a really great break for us. Then on to Port Douglas, just a hour's drive up the coast from Cairns, where we stayed for 3 days at Le Cher du Monde on Macrossan Street, the main shopping-and-restaurant street. The apartment was quite comfortable and the location was ideal. Ours faced the pool, so if there was any street noise at night, we didn't hear it. More goofing off in beautiful weather, interspersed with long walks around town. We were interested to see that the old place we'd stayed in years and years ago (Coconut Grove) has recently been replaced by a large modern upmarket resort building. On our way back down the coast, we stopped for two nights at Port Hinchinbrook in Cardwell, a resort that turned out to be almost deserted of visitors, with extremely limited food options. We ended up driving the 3 km to Cardwell (a small town strung out along the sea shore) and picking up takeaway food (salads and sandwiches) there. Our cabin was otherwise pleasant, and had its own outdoor spa. Our original plans called for taking a cruise to the resort on Hinchinbrook Island for the day, but we chose not to, preferring to sit around reading our books instead. Then home to Airlie Beach the next day. I'm working on an album of photos of the trip and will post a link here when it's done and uploaded.

On to Wollongong

On Friday we checked out of the hotel, dragged our luggage several blocks to a Europcar rental office, and picked up a car. I had chosen Europcar partly because their office was within a block of easy access to the freeway going south... where we wanted to go. We drove south, checking out the beaches south of the airport and then driving through the Royal National Park on our way to Wollongong. I had never visited most of this stretch of coast, despite having lived in the Sydney area for 10 years. The weather was beautiful. I didn’t find many photo opportunities in the National Park (most of the good views required more walking, or more precarious walking—such as on slippery stones over a creek—than I wanted to indulge in). Just south of the park is a great view towards Wollongong. Along this stretch of coast, part of the old road has been replaced with the Seacliff Bridge, which is just visible as a Z-curve in the photo below. The road is on huge pylons. It opened around 2 years ago. The only way to get good photos is by walking along the pedestrian walkway, but as this involved a much longer walk than I felt up to, we didn’t do it. Eventually we reached the Wollongong area and found the Bed-and-Breakfast place where we were staying for 3 nights. It had only been open for 6 weeks in a newly-built house, so some bits weren’t quite finished. Despite that, it was a comfortable place, the food was good, and the proprietors were interesting to talk with. They have only 3 guest rooms. On 2 of the nights, we were the only guests; on Saturday, another couple was staying there, but we didn’t meet them. Wollongong is a small industrial city with a growing university. It’s been reinventing itself as a tourist destin­ation, taking advantage of good beaches and a beautiful sea view, nice for more people than just those wishing to enjoy the surfing. On Monday we drove south aways to look at other parts of the coast, then back to Sydney, dropping off the rental car in the mid-afternoon. More lunch and dinner visits with Sydney friends followed.

Trip to Sydney & visit to Apple Store

In late June, encouraged by my walking progess, I took my first trip by air since my hip operations. The construction noise was driving me nuts, so one Monday morning I announced to Eric that I was going to Sydney for a week; would he like to come with me? Of course he agreed, so I spent an hour or so making plane and hotel bookings and on Wednesday we departed. As expected, I encountered no dramas with the airport security people, either at our local airport or in Sydney on our return. They seemed quite accustomed to dealing with passengers with metal hips and knees. As advised, I mentioned my hips to the attendant before stepping through the detector (which beeped loudly), and was then given a closer going-over with a wand. No big deal, and very little extra delay. We stayed in a different hotel in Sydney this time, for two reasons: we like to try new (to us) hotels whenever one has a good deal on Wotif, and this trip we wanted to do some different things in a slightly different part of the city than usual. The hotel I chose (Park Regis) is only two blocks from Town Hall Station and another block to the specialist SF bookstore, Galaxy. Then a few more blocks to the new Apple store, which had just opened a week or two earlier. We really enjoyed visiting the Apple store. We went early on Thursday morning, when it wasn’t busy, so we had a chance to chat with several of the young, enthusiastic staff and play with all the gadgets that interested us. We entertained one of the staff by listing all the Apple stores we’d been in, in the USA and (in my case) in the UK. This encouraged her to point out that the store has the biggest Apple logo and the longest Genius Bar (the help section) in the world. In overall size, the Sydney store is second only to the London store. Here are some photos. Apologies to those of you who don’t find Apple stores (and their architecture) as exciting as we do. An album of photos is here. Front of Apple store, Sydney. Note 15-metre tall glass panels along the front, and the big Apple logo. Eric and I at the glass staircase The glass staircase has two levels. From the upper level you can see people walking up the lower stairs. The big logo as seen from inside the store. Ground floor has computers (desktop models are at the other end of the room), Top floor is the Genius Bar, where staff diagnose whatever problem customers have with their computers or iPods. There are also 4 tables with computers for kids (featuring software for children), and (not visible in photo) areas for individual and group training—all free.

New word of the week: Nerdgassing

"Nerdgassing: I Coin This Word In the Name of Humanity". http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=834 Definition: The venting nerds emit when some (often minor) detail of a book/movie/TV show/comic book/etc either conflicts with canon and/or handwaves through some some suspect science. I enjoyed the comments, and the masthead photo on the blog, too. And the whole topic reminded me of the reactions of some people, especially a subset of professional editors, when faced with incorrect punctuation or usage (or what they see as incorrect punctuation or usage, which in many cases includes the way the Brits and Aussies do it).

Reno in 2011 Worldcon bid

I'm now the Australian agent for the "Reno in 2011" WorldCon bid. A large group of my friends (scattered all over the US) are running this bid, in opposition to a bid from Seattle that is run by people I don't know. The Reno bid's website is http://www.rcfi.org/ I probably wouldn't attend (I don't do WorldCons unless they are in Australia), but I like their attitude... and I know that among the group is plenty of conrunning experience so they should do a good job of it.

Leg improvement

On Saturday evening I stood up from sitting in Eric's recliner chair and something in my left leg went click and it HURT LIKE HELL when I put any weight on it. He helped me into the bedroom to lie down, and we both freaked. Saturday of a 3-day weekend—what a time for something to happen! Fortunately it didn't hurt when I was lying down, so I stayed in bed. Now the weird part—when I got up on Sunday morning, my leg felt—and functioned—better than it had for months. I was walking without lurching! We assume something snapped back into place (instead of out of place, as we'd first thought). It's still doing fine, and I’m finally improving my walking distance and speed. Oh, and as an extra bonus—my bad left knee has been hurting a lot less than before.

New cupboards

For years I've been making do with two open-fronted sets of shelves as my "pantry" in the hall, but a few months ago I decided it was time to seriously attempt to replace them with something a bit tidier, that is with doors to hide the jumble of contents. After looking at lots of unsuitable (and often overpriced) cupboards in several stores, I finally located ones I liked and ordered from one of the local hardware stores three single-door flat-pack pantry cupboards. To the surprise of both me and Eric, the cupboards turned out to be really easy to put together. The instructions were good (good English, readily under­standable, with good clear diagrams), and the quality control of the cutting of the pieces and the hole spacing for screws was excellent. The quality is conspicuously better than most of the cheap flat-pack stuff we've bought in the past 10+ years, and not much more expensive. They are from a company in Western Australia. I did most of the assembly myself, enlisting Eric only for the heavy lifting.

Kookaburras visit

Two kookaburras visited us this evening. We fed one some strips of chicken. It was interesting to watch the bird whack the chicken against the railing before eating it, as if it were a lizard or something that needed to be stunned or killed. One of those "wish I had the video camera out" moments!

Eric in the newspaper

My concentration lately has not been helped at all by the construction work below us reaching another phase of pounding things into the ground. THUMP THUMP THUMP (etc). Today they started at 08:00! (They generally quit around 17:30, though they do take a few breaks, for lunch and such.) We probably should take a trip somewhere for a few weeks. Last week Eric was interviewed (and photographed) for the Sunday Mail (a big Brisbane newspaper), which devoted most of two pages to an article on "the battle for Airlie Beach". Eric got the big quote at the top of the page: "It's really developed and it's noisy, dirty and disruptive. The things which made it charming are starting to disappear." The main story (without that quote or any mention of Eric) got into the online version of the paper, but the quote, photo, and interview of Eric didn't; his bit was only in the print version. Oh well. I can't post it on my blog for all to see, because of copyright.

Outrageous taxi dispatcher

While Eric and I were out walking today, we met an acquaintance who had injured her leg and was leaning heavily on a cane. She said she was waiting for a taxi to take her to a doctor's appointment at an office 3 km away, but said she wasn't sure if one would arrive to pick her up. She explained that when she had phoned for a pickup, the dispatcher had told her to go to the taxi rank (about 100 yards away) even though she'd mentioned she was unable to walk that far. We were outraged. We also assumed that the drivers themselves would be happy to come get her, despite the dispatcher being a jerk, so when we got to the taxi rank (where two taxis were waiting), Eric spoke to the first driver. He agreed that the dispatcher's statement was ridiculous and promptly drove off to collect the woman. I hope she makes an official complaint to the taxi company about the dispatcher. Update: Turns out she had a broken ankle, and she did make a complaint.

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.