If you want to see camera geeks, this is the place to go. I've never seen so many macro lenses in my life. The weather this year co-operated better than last year though, so it was a nice wander with my friend Kelly on a Saturday. You can see the pics here

A great ride on a great day, although I need to bake some power bars. I was starting to bonk part way up and feeling kind of shakey-legged once we got back. A pint of Great Lakes beer set me right though. Best way to replace the electrolytes.

The weekend before my friend Kelly was out for the Blues Festival. And the rain. We saw some great acts and did some touristy things while she was here.

It's funny that I spend more time with people coming out from Toronto than I do people I've met in Ottawa. I really need to get on that.

However, I was unable to resist the allure of this piece of wonder which is now my new cyclocross bike. I've been looking forever for a classic cross bike in 58-60 cm and this it.

But today, as I was putting my Dad's birthday present in the mail, two songs were playing on the intercom that gave me pause. The first was the Scorpion's Rock you like a hurricane. Now I'd expect that in Ottawa, a song released in 1984 playing on mall intercom. But not this particular song. What the locals make of the lyric "Give her inches and feed her well", I'm not sure. The second song was Bad motorscooter by Montrose. Now you may not know much about [Ronnie] Montrose's band, a bit of a one hit wonder with a self-titled album in the mid 70's. You probably are more familiar with the lead singers' name, Sammy Hagar.

In any case, not something I'd be expecting on a Saturday at the mall. I was never a huge Scorpion's fan, but hearing Montrose was a nice treat.

A new wine I've just tried is the Pierre LaPlace 2005 Madiran. Madiran's are made with Tannat grapes, topped up with Cab Franc or Cab Sauginon. Typically really tannic wines, this one is really nice after you let it breath a little. Nose is a bit of black cherry with some plum and you get a real sense of the tannins that are coming your way. Flavour is strongly tannic, but not overpowering. So that means it'll taste quite dry with the flavour of black cherry, currants, overtop of a bit of plum without being bitter. It's got some legs with the tannins dominating but you still get a sense of cherry skins. Very nice for $14.95 at the LCBO. I bought half a case while I was there.

Speaking of plonk, you may already know about the Argentine Fuzion (Shiraz/Malbec) in the LCBO right now. At $7.45 a bottle, its a great value. Another great value (and a tastier wine IMO) is the Nero d'Avola Enzo di Sette Rue . Very nice for $12.95.

Anyway, one thing I don't have in my new apartment is a decent wine storage place. I decided to stick one in a closet. A convenient sale and a gift card from Christmas for Canadian Tire, and I had a new wine rack.

After reading some reviews on the Canadian Tire website, I decided to buy some #6 1 1/2" screws to replace the nails provided in this kit.

The first steps of assembly are the hardest. You need to set all the metal strips up and getting them started is a pain.

Follow the instructions closely and use the plastic plugs provided.

Once all the strips are in place, it's pretty trivial to put the wooden blocks in place. You don't even need to hammer most of them, just putting my weight on them slid them into place. Because you don't get any spares, I was a little dodgy about forcing them, but you really don't have to. If they don't fit easily, just give them a 1/4 turn and they're good to go.

Again, follow the instructions for putting the rear (screwed down) strips in place. Do all the corners first with the cross-braces, then fill screw down all the middle strips.

Because the screws were a little slower than nailing, it took me an hour or so to get this finished. It didn't end up fitting in the closet I'd intended it for (I couldnt' finagle it in the door) so it's in my main closet. Still, it's not against an outside wall although there may be some drafts from under the door. All my really good wine goes in a cooler anyway. I need to put some mounting blocks in place to bolt it to the wall though. The closet has baseboards so the rack doesn't fit flush against the wall. In any case, for storing 72 bottles of wine, it works pretty well. If I buy another, I'll hold out for a sale; for $49, it's a good deal.

Work is going well. I'm pretty much responsible for the respiratory/enteric and vaccine preventable disease portfolio at work, in addition to anything else that pops up.

Ottawa is still gripped by a transit strike, which does not affect me much as I'm still biking everywhere. It's actually kind of nice not to have buses blowing by me, but as we approach day 40, it's getting a bit much. Ottawa being a fairly right wing town, most of the moaning I've heard is about the union and how they should be grateful to have jobs, blah blah blah. Working in a unionized environment and having a fairly sweet deal myself, I don't feel in a position to criticize.

You might say from the foregoing that I'm a union supporter. I have been involved in union organizing and served as a union president. But, in reality, collective agreements ensure fair play and unions merely serve to help balance power in negotiation. If you don't agree, that's great that you work in the environment you do. Lot's of folks don't and feel they have no recourse.

Today I rode out to an industrial area of town to buy a used computer desk. I have to rent a truck to get it home, unfortunately, but it was an interesting ride for a couple of reasons. First is it emphasized my first two points. It's not an area you'd expect to see a bike and the roads are some of the narrower I've seen in Ottawa. Second was that, in Ottawa, buses have their own roads (or transitways) from which other traffic is barred. With the strike on, I jumped on a transit way. It was so sweet. Sort of like the Ride for the Heart in Toronto where they close the DVP and the bikes take over...

This week has heralded a major snow dump and a transit strike on Wednesday. It hasn't affected traffic volume too much, at least not on my route and commute times. Thus far, apart from goo accumulation on the Raleigh, the winter commute in Ottawa has been sort of fun. You can't beat a pristine shoulder for riding through. If only the cars would stay at home.

The run today doesn't give me much indication of traffic volume either. Volume today wasn't bad, but I'm thinking it's the ride home that will be the worst.

In other news, my voice is almost back to normal after spending Sunday screaming at the Ottawa Cyclocross Provincials. You can see pics at Mike Clark's flickr account http://flickr.com/photos/shapelike/

So yes, back to the move. Tomorrow morning I should be packed and on the road by noon. Here's hoping

And it sounds like I'm getting a job offer from Ottawa Public Health to cover a maternity leave position as an infectious disease epidemiologist. It's been a long seven months looking for working and straining not to do something soul-sucking, but it's paid off. I'm really looking forward to this job, learning more stuff, and getting paid!

In other news a cyclist was caught in Toronto with a gun.

But all work and no play isn't good! So I've interspersed the work with some hacking of images put by pals in the Toronto Fixed thread of the bikeforums http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?p=7784738

The first was one of my pals Keith and Wes (that's Wes running up the hill).

With the most recent a pic put up by Matt Rennick Living for the City.

Both done with Gimp and Imagemagick with some optimization online at gif image resizer.

It's fun to break up the day with this stuff, even though I pretty much suck at it. But in any case, how long can you really look over CUSUMs and epi curves without going cross-eyed?

Looking it over, the zig-zag lock was seized (and I promptly broke it trying to loosen it off). A few minutes with a drill to drill out the mounting bolt and a dive into the parts bin for a machine bolt and an old quick release skewer cap from the bike parts bin and it's working fine. It's up for adoption or donation to Goodwill.

Now back on getting the recumbent ready for sale. Really long cable paths are a bugger to adjust properly.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1007083aig1.html

I'd say heads should roll, but that would just means whopping lawyer fees and no result. Unfortunately, it's unlikely this pillaging of the American people will end any time soon unless there is a significant about face on corporate transparency and regulation in the US.

I've given some thought to using a text browser to replace Iceweasel, but generally my websurfing is pretty image dependant. I also think that, as a visual media, that's not a bad thing.

This chimp thought I was turning to have words as I pulled into my apartment. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take his picture with my cell camera. Given I think I know this car from the neighbourhood, it would have been good to get his plates and see how he like's tuna juice on the engine block.

Rage fantasy, really. This turnip isn't worth my time or effort.

I thought I'd put up a brief blurb of what I used and how I got it running as some resources are pretty scattered and not always written in plain language. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about configuration, there's lots of sources for that out there already. My favourites include My First Mutt and Randall Wood's excellent mutt manual

For my mutt installation, I used:

• Mutt version 1.518
• abook an address book designed for mutt and as well as a patch to allow abook to import vcards
• getmail , the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) I decided to use.
• esmtp - a Mail Transfer (sending) Agent I decided to use instead of setting up sendmail.
• urlview which allows mutt to route inline html addresses to the web-browser or your choice.

Step 1: Install mutt. I installed mutt with both pop3 support and imap support. You can configure mutt to get connect to a pop or imap address. I just configure it with these options in case I wanted to do this. If you use a mail transfer agent, you can just compile mutt without these options. I figured using a mail transfer agent was my best option as I want to download mail from at least three email accounts.

Step2: Getting your email requires a mail delivery agent to pick up your mail on remote servers and put it somewhere on your computer for mutt to access. If you only have one account, mutt can do this for you. I have several, including gmail. After looking at the options, I found getmail to be easiest to configure for multiple locations. You need to write a configuration file (getmailrc) for each address and then configure mutt to run all of them in the get mail command from mutt. You can also set getmail up as a cronjob and run it at whatever interval you like to check your email.

Step 3 For sending email, rather than use the complex sendmail system, I opted to use esmtp. If you're setting up gmail, be sure to set permissions for the certificate folder and file using the command line rather than a file manager. You need all four digits set in the chmod to get the directory and certificate file to work. Depending on your system, esmtp needs libesmtp to run.

Step 4 So now mutt can send and get mail with no problem. I added abook (version 0.6.0pre2 patched with the vcard patch). The vcard patch works only on this version. To patch the file, untar the tarball and run the patch file from the root directory of the tarball. This will get the patch rolling. It may prompt you for the other file names that are present in the start of the patch file. I tend to use mutt's alias feature for mailing lists and abook for individual addresses. I also added urlview to route inline html addresses. Once urlview is installed, you need an .urlview file in your user directory. Put in the first line Command nameofyourwebbrowers %s. This is what worked for me (Command iceweasel %s). When urlview presents you with the link list, clicking the link will start your browser.

The various pager commands etc. to run some of this stuff in mutt are included on My First Mutt.

What I didn't do is setup procmail. For one, I don't get a lot of spam email. For another, I like to sort my mail myself rather than setup a filter and then look through multiple folders for new mail that's been sorted. I also tend to use a Getting things done approach to my email. More on this method here. I find the GTD method a good way to keep a handle on my emails and what I need to do, not just a method of putting them in various piles.

I don't use a vim outline, I use hnb, an ncurses hierarchial notebook.

Now I don't begrudge anyone making money, but it does get my back up when I see bands like the Eagles or Beachboys, way past their prime, stroking their fans for tickets. Well, okay, maybe a starting ticket price of $55 USD plus ticketmasters' mystery fees is worth it as a starting point to see a band like the Beach Boys, but not for me.

Even worse is the example exemplified by a band I really respect(ed) AC/DC is one. For their recent Black Ice tours, all seats, no matter how crappy are $90. If you can get them. You're more likely to pay well into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars though. The concert in Toronto sold out in 20 minutes. On ticketsnow, the scalping, I mean "secondary market" site owned by Ticketmaster, you're looking between 295 and 1000 each for tickets. While this may not be the bands fault per se, it shows that bands themselves aren't the only ones cashing in on hard core fans and the bands are doing dick all to make sure that their fans have reasonable access to come see them. Working man's band my ass.

Save your cash and see some local bands.

The other is the Colophon entry which summarizes the blog and how it's put together. Given Blosxom's mode of operation, I had to reset the date stamp to bury the entry.

The last thing is the Music I'm listening to section. This is a tweak of an allmusic plugin. It still uses allmusic (although I may modify it to use emusic) but only parses the album image. I found the original parsing syntax was falling down and including huge swaths of irrelevant text. This likely due to a change at allmusic that the plugin couldn't accomodate. A minor edit presents only the album covers.

So that's it for the blog function. In other news, the search for work continues. While I'm not totally depressed at the lack of responses to applications, it's getting the point where I might need to consider some types of work I'd really rather not be doing. Chin up though and we'll see what comes about. On the other hand, being unemployed is great for developing my disc golf game!

Two broken spokes which I've replaced and I just need to retrue my wheel. What a pain in the ass.

I'm really hoping this is all it is.

Why this is such a deal is beyond me. Republican values are generally applied to "others" and not their exponents. Why should it be a contradiction that a staunch Republican has a pregnant daughter? Nancy Reagan was three months pregnant when she married Ronald Reagan. Why worry about yourself when there are children "out there" to save? George Bush spent $135 million on funding abstinence only sex-ed programs. The fact that they don't work is irrelevant to the Republican mind set. Oh, if people would only listen.

Okay, it's late and this is the best I could come up with.

Now, let's see if I'll actually post to it!!!

The seat is somewhat cranked down from the pic above as I've done some fine tuning on the body position. I'm getting used to shifting to the top ring as well as it takes a bit of oomph compared to the record shifters on the Pinarello. But I felt much more comfortable on it, particularly starting which is where I've been struggling Recumbents often give a bit of wobble on the start, but I've improved that significantly. The only thing to do is switch back to the original tires. At full pressure, the Terrys that are on it now rub the brake bridge on the rear of the bike.

Now off to finish cooking some chicken legs and black eyed pea pasta salad for the picnic with Sandra today! Yummy.

So a lot has happened since the last update. My Dad had a stroke from which he has recovered well. My Mom had knee replacemet surgery and is doing very well. They've both come to the realization that things have to change in how they conduct their lives but they seem to be dealing pretty well with all of that. It's hard with me being in Toronto. I spent two weeks at home after my Dad had his stroke and hope to go back in the next week or so for 10 days for a visit. They've more or less got their lives back on track and I can probably help out a bit with some odds and ends as sort of a pre-fall work thing. Putting storm windows on, that sort o thing. It's been an interesting experience for me too. My family has been relatively well and everything has come together. It's a bit of a jolt on the mortality.

In other news, I've finished my Masters and am currently looking for work. I'm intending on staying in Toronto, but have not heard back from any of the ten or so places I've applied. Which is a bit of a pain. In the old days, you'd at least get a letter telling you they weren't interested. Nowadays, in the age of the internet, email, group mailing etc. they only contact you if you're selected for an interview. What a pain.

In fact its got me thinking of doing my own thing and trying the entrepeneur route. The past week in the news has been layoffs in Bell (6% of the their middle managers in Ontario), Starbucks (yeah, like I care), and now Governer Schwarzenegger in California is attempting an apparently illegal move to cut the pay of state employees in order to balance the books. Looks like the corporate world has found out you can't pay CEO's exorbitant salaries and grow in an uncontrolled fashion to satisfy stockholders and still be viable.

So the search goes on.

I did forget how bad roads are in the Yonge and Finch area, though, and smacked a couple of large potholes. Also some of the motorists were confused by a bike on the road. Unfortunately I knee-jerked my signal finger a couple of times which detracted from an otherwise pleasurable ride through some beautiful areas.

I did forget my sunscreen though and I felt a little baked when I got back. I wanted to get the Vision out for a quick scoot and may just end up doing that tomorrow morning.

Of course I didn't have a pump, patch or tube with me. But thanks to the amazing Doug, a random cyclist by who went home and got a tube and returned with it, I got back on the trail. It's people like Doug who restore my faith in human nature.

However, shortly afterwards I got another flat. This is surely a sign from the Great Magnet that I am not to go mountain biking today. After arriving home I discovered the culprit, which is what I had suspected. I used these rims for touring and had put a brass insert into the rim to convert from Schrader to Presta valves. At the lower pressure of the mountain bike tire, the tube sheared along the insert, cutting the valve as it inserts into the tube. So it's back to Schrader valves for me. An inauspicious end to what has been a pretty good day.

I've had this thing since '89 and we've been through a lot together. It was my my Saskatchewan offroad machine, my commuter when I first moved to Toronto, my touring bike in Newfoundland and BC, and now it's returned to it's roots, minus a few bits.

The Mag21 fork is new to the bike, a Craigslist purchase, tuned up by Phil at Cycletherapy, but everything else is old (school). The Hite-Rite, the Scott Mathauser pads, even the Panaracer Karthoum on the front wis circa late 80's (which may not be my wisest idea in the case of the tire, but it looks fine). It'll be hitting the trails this Tuesday on the dirt version of devil strip rollers.

The next one is completely new, both to the fleet and to me. It's a Vision R65 short wheel base recumbent.

I got this, again off Craigslist, for touring mostly. The Bianchi (see above) was super heavy, and a bit of a white knuckle affair on descents, on tour. I'm just getting it dialed in right now. I've adjusted the boom and chain length and now need to recable it. The brakes are goo right now, as I found out the hard way.

There is definitely a learning curve. When turning you need to coast or else you'll hit your heel on the wheel. Speed bumps are also interesting as your feet go straight down when you hit a bump with your fleet slipping off. So clipless pedals are next.

But it's fun so far. I need to spend some more time riding it to get used to it, particularly when turning. It'll be great for summer touring though!

I'm not sure if I'll be keeping it as it may be a bike for my friend Sandra's nephew when he comes to town. We'll have to see. Space is becoming a problem.

It went over pretty well, which was good, with some good questions. Made a few contacts which might be helpful in the Search for Job. No offers though ....

Yes, the Pinarello's are back for the season. And what better way to welcome them back than with colour co-ordinated shoes

They repel motorists, make you go faster, make you a better lover and ward of satan. Couldn't do much better than that.

It won't really feel like it's over for a bit, though. I'm still working at TPH on the TB project, but that may be winding down a bit as well too. We'll see how it goes. Then on to find a real job (again), but not too soon. Me need some feet up time.